Wherefore Art Thou, James Potter?
by GhostOfBambi
Summary: For never was a story of more woe than this of James Potter, and his sad, pathetic attempts to win the heart of a girl who thinks he's a prize idiot.
1. WHY, ROMEO, ART THOU MAD?

**Author's Note:** This story is set in a sixth-form college, which isn't quite university but isn't quite high school, either. I've taken a few small liberties with reality, for example, sixth-form students wouldn't study Romeo and Juliet and most sixth-forms probably wouldn't provide the range of subjects that are available to the students in this story, but needs must.

FYI, I wrote this chapter before the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke, so the references to Hollywood creepers is totally coincidental. What a trip.

 **CHAPTER ONE: WHY, ROMEO, ART THOU MAD?**

 **Act 1, Scene 1**

 **September 2017**

 _Hogwarts, a private school_

"Drop your bag, Potter, and sit back down at once."

"But the lesson is over," said James.

McGonagall frowned dangerously at him over the top of her square spectacles, but James was standing several feet clear of the fir pointer she used for lessons, and felt safe enough to engulf the last minutes of class with some time-consuming cheek.

Of course, she had never struck a student with the pointer before, but she had once told him that he was bound to send at least one of the staff round the twist before his school career came to an end, and for all he knew, she may have been hinting at something. It was prudent to avoid presenting himself as a target.

"Has the bell rung?" said McGonagall aridly. "I wasn't aware that I'd lost my hearing."

"No, but you'd finished the lesson and I wanted to get to the library as fast as I could."

He was met with silence, which felt like an invitation to regale the class with further impertinence, so he grinned and scratched idly behind his ear, a movement that smoothly transitioned into a hair-ruffle.

"It's important to study hard," he explained. "Otherwise I might have to sell my body on the streets, and wind up richer than I already am."

Though an amused murmur shuddered through the room, McGonagall's only sign of recognition was the lift of an eyebrow, of which James was immediately envious. He couldn't raise one brow at a time; despite his best efforts, one would insist upon joining the other. It was his greatest failure as a student and as a man, and McGonagall was a sly cat to remind him. As James recalled, he had once revealed this shortcoming to her during a careers advice meeting, though she'd feigned disinterest in what she'd labelled as 'made-up weaknesses' and forced him to write an essay on self-awareness.

"Is that so?" she replied.

"You're such an inspiring teacher."

"How kind of you, Potter."

"You're welcome, Miss."

"And as you're so fond of my company, you may join me after school this evening for the first of a week's detentions," she continued, and drove the tip of her pointer into the ground like a screwdriver. "Unless you'd rather sit back down and avoid them."

James normally enjoyed an opportunity to go toe-to-toe with McGonagall, but he had a pressing engagement after school that he couldn't afford to miss. He dropped his school bag to the floor, where it landed with a thump, and sat down next to Sirius, who was picking at the dirt beneath his nails with the lid of a biro. An assortment of pens spilled from the open front pouch and rolled in all directions across the polished laminate floor in a bid for freedom.

His classmates, many of whom had been watching him expectantly, sank back into their earlier stupors.

McGonagall rapped the floor with her pointer. "I have something to discuss with you all, now that Potter's made his customary plea for attention. How is everyone enjoying _Romeo and Juliet?"_

Another murmur rose from the assembled students, so apathetic that it didn't quite reach the corners of the room.

"Thank you all for your unique perspectives," said McGonagall. "Since you're all so eager to discuss the play that accounts for 15% of your entire A-level, I take great pleasure in informing you that in lieu of the Christmas pantomime this year, the headmaster has instead elected to put on a performance of said play—again, that's _Romeo and Juliet_ , for those of you who've slept through your first week of classes," she added, with a nasty look for Sirius. "Do you have any insight to offer on the play, Mr. Black?"

Sirius shrugged. "Not enough car chases."

"On behalf of Mr. Shakespeare, I apologise for the lack of car chases in 16th century Verona."

"Thanks," said Sirius. "He's forgiven."

McGonagall looked as if she would quite like to box his ears, but her nostril-flare subsided, and she carried on speaking to the rest of the class. "The headmaster is looking for students from Year 13 to audition, and as you're currently studying this text, I'd particularly like to see quite a few of you getting involved."

Louder murmurs filled the classroom. James glanced over his shoulder at his other mates. Remus was staring blankly ahead of him with no appearance of interest, but Peter had thrust his hand in the air and was watching McGonagall expectantly.

"Yes, Pettigrew?" said McGonagall.

"Will you need people to help out backstage?" said Peter, his voice high and reedy.

"We'll be requiring volunteers to work on lighting, costuming and so on. I'll post a sign-up sheet on the bulletin board. Booth?"

"When are the auditions?" said Beatrice Booth, who sat a couple of rows behind Peter and Remus, next to Lily Evans, who had caught one of James's pens beneath her foot and was rolling it back and forth. James watched her for a moment to see if she'd look up at him, but she didn't, so he turned back to face the front of the room.

"Auditions will take place on Monday after school, 4:30 p.m. sharp," McGonagall was saying. "There's no need to sign up, just pop along to the music room if you want to try out for a part. You'll be asked to read for a role of your choosing, so I'd advise anyone who's interested to read through the text and spend the weekend practising. Rehearsals will also take place at 4:30 p.m., starting the following Monday, and will repeat every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday until mid-December."

Sirius put up his hand but didn't wait for McGonagall to call on him. "Will there be car chases?"

"No."

"Will there be chariot chases?"

"No."

"Will there be any kind of chases?"

"Would you ever consider _not_ being a tremendous pain in the backside, Mr. Black?"

"No."

"You've answered your own question," she said, and was spared from any further conversation with Sirius by the sound of the bell. "Lupin, stay in your seat. I've got something to discuss with you."

James stood up and darted past a confused-looking Remus and Peter, leaving his bag on the floor behind him. The rest of the class were shoving their things into their school bags and rising to their feet, but he managed to reach Lily Evans's desk before she stood up. On a whim, he got down on one knee before her.

Booth noticed him immediately and snorted, but Evans, who was packing her bag with meticulous precision, pretended not to see him.

"Oi, Evans," he said, in a loud voice.

The four or five people who hadn't already fled the room—not including Sirius and Peter, who were waiting for him, or Remus, who was waiting for McGonagall, or Booth, who was waiting for Evans—paused by the door to see what he was up to. This suited James just fine because he loved an audience, though the look in Lily's bright green eyes told him that he would live to regret his decision.

"What?" she said, through gritted teeth, but James had already invested too much in the endeavour to stop now.

"You have made me the happiest man in the upper sixth," he declared. "Will you do me the honour of giving me back my pen?"

A year ago, when Evans was the new girl at school, a stunt like this would have earned him an animated scolding, but she must have taken up yoga over the summer because she fixed him with a look of sublime, zen-like indifference and kicked the pen away. It rolled beneath Winifred Barnes's chair, where it came to a quivering halt, much like his heart, which persisted in pining for Evans despite her complete lack of interest in everything he had to offer.

His heart also pined for bacon, which was also beyond his control, but at least he could readily procure bacon for the low, low price of £2.50 at the local Tesco Express.

"That's a no, is it?" he said, and pouted. "I'm deeply wounded."

"Get out of my classroom, Potter!" cried McGonagall, as if she had only just noticed his presence. She couldn't fool him. James privately believed that the teachers were very interested in their students' romantic entanglements, and gossiped about them in the staff room. "My desk, Mr. Lupin. You can collect Potter's bag and pens for him when we're done."

In the meantime, Lily Evans had stood up, shouldered her own bag and swept regally out of the room, followed closely by Booth, who was laughing openly. James climbed to his feet and was met by Peter and Sirius, the latter clapping him hard on the back.

"Hard luck, mate," he said. "Buy her a ring next time."

Peter snorted with laughter, and it sounded like a great, wheezing expulsion of phlegm. "A cock ring, maybe."

"Detention, Pettigrew!" cried McGonagall.

And with that egregious lack of foresight, sense or comedic prowess on Peter's part, James Potter felt slightly better about the world.

 **Act 1, Scene 2**

 _a corridor_

Remus stayed in his impromptu meeting with McGonagall for ten minutes and emerged from the classroom looking sheepish.

"She's not happy with you, mate," he told Peter, and shut the door behind him with a resolute click. "She says you're to be at her office at 4 p.m. for detention."

 _"No,"_ Peter whined. "It's Friday, I'm not hanging around here for another three hours just to sit through a bloody detention."

"Go in there and tell her that yourself, then," Remus suggested.

James knew that Peter would have sooner taken a bath with a plugged-in hairdryer than march into McGonagall's lair and announce that he was passing up detention in favour of an afternoon of _Fifa 17_ , or feeling up his girlfriend, Helena, in the back row of the cinema. "Why do I get a detention and James doesn't?"

"Because you told him to buy a cock ring for Evans in front of a teacher, you fucking weirdo," Sirius supplied.

"I didn't mean for Evans! I meant for James to use on himself!"

"Shut up," said James, sulkily.

Remus shrugged James's bag off his left shoulder and handed it to him. "I got your bag, and most of your pens, I think."

"Cheers," he said, and hitched it onto his own shoulder. "What did she want, anyway?"

"Just mentoring stuff," said Remus, looking at the ground. He was a great favourite with the teachers because he did things like study, speak respectfully and care about his future. As a result, he was always being roped into academic mentoring or leading tours of the school on parents' evenings. Remus talked about it sometimes, but the topic of extra responsibility bored James so much that he would feel the spools of his brain unwind, melt and leak through his ears like chocolate fondue, so he rarely listened.

Sirius, who was leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets, pushed off with one foot. "Let's get food in town. I've got less than an hour 'til French."

"I'll walk to town with you, but I can't actually stay for lunch," said Remus. "I've got a project to work on at home."

"Great, we can get McDonald's."

Remus pulled a face. "McDonald's is disgusting."

"Then it's a good thing you're not staying," said Sirius.

As one, they turned and moved down the corridor in the direction of the northernmost exit, which would lead them directly into town, and an enticing plethora of fast food eateries.

When James and his friends started sixth form, he had been determined for the four of them to take at least one course together, but by the time he made this grand announcement, the ever-conscientious Remus had already signed up for his subjects. As a result, James, Sirius and Peter speedily put their names down for English Literature, despite Remus's assertion that one shouldn't decide their subjects based on what their friends were doing. His argument fell on deaf ears, and not one of them ever regretted the decision. It was an easy class—at least, James thought so—and as they'd all had McGonagall for GCSE English, they knew they liked her enough to spend four-and-a-half hours per week in her company.

Otherwise, they all took completely different subjects, which was why Remus and Peter got to swan home early on Fridays while Sirius slogged it out in French and James hung around waiting for last-period Psychology. James was sure that the school had made this scheduling decision over the summer as part of some cruel vendetta against him—never mind that Remus would be starting every Monday with double Economics, followed immediately by double Statistics—but the joke was on the administration, because Lily Evans took Psychology _and_ lived six streets away from James, which meant that he'd get to hang behind and pine for her when she walked home on Friday evenings, hence why he was so eager to avoid detention with McGonagall.

Technically, Remus had pointed out, this was stalking, but there wasn't much James could do about it—he had to take the same route home, and he didn't know how to be within walking distance of Lily Evans and _not_ pine. He had thought to spend the summer getting over her, but then she'd shown up at the lido in a bright blue bikini and that was the end of that ambition.

"What do you think of this play?" said Remus, to the group in general. "Anyone going to audition?"

James snorted derisively. "And waste my free time prancing about with a skull, banging on about death and revenge? No thanks."

"That's _Hamlet,_ though," said Peter.

"I'm auditioning," said Sirius.

 _This_ was a surprise. Sirius usually never expended effort on extracurricular activities, unless it involved putting bubble bath in the fountain or lobbing projectiles at Snape across the common room. James looked at his best mate with raised eyebrows. "Are you joking?"

Sirius shrugged. "McGonagall will probably let us off homework for a few months. Everyone who did the panto last year got an exemption from non-compulsory coursework."

"You'd have to actually read the play, you know," said Remus.

"I have read it," Sirius retorted. "'Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch; marry, 'tis enough,' or whatever. They should have set us _Macbeth."_

He pushed against the fire exit door—which was supposed to be kept closed, but they'd refused to adhere to this rule since the day they saw Slughorn using it as a shortcut to the staff carpark—with his shoulder and strode out. It opened onto a brightly-lit courtyard, where several students were assembled in various states of lethargy beside the fountain, desperate to soak up the last vestiges of the summer. Sirius loped ahead of their group, his shoulder-length black hair gleaming in the sunlight.

"Why didn't I know about this?" said James, and jogged a couple of steps to catch up with him.

"Why didn't you know that I'd read the play we're supposed to read this year?" said Sirius. "God, I couldn't say."

"I meant, why didn't I know that you were auditioning?"

"Because McGonagall announced it twenty seconds ago, and you didn't ask."

"I assumed you wouldn't want to do it."

"I'll only do it if I get Mercutio. Or Tybalt, maybe. McGonagall can shove it if she thinks I'm playing Romeo. I'd have to act like _you,"_ he added, inclining his head towards James.

Remus snorted, though Peter looked nonplussed, but that was enough for James to surmise that he was being insulted. "What do you mean?"

"Well," Remus began. "Romeo is kind of—"

"A soppy twat," Sirius finished, grinning. "He spends the whole play mooning over a woman, kind of like you do with Evans, but less annoying because Romeo dies at the end and gives everyone a break."

"I don't—" James couldn't argue that he didn't moon over Evans when he'd fake-proposed to her in class not fifteen minutes prior, and mourned her distaste for him for ten minutes afterwards. "—care for this topic of conversation."

"James can stick to one woman, at least," Remus pointed out.

"Do you think McGonagall will let me be sound manager?" said Peter.

"You did it last year and the year before," Sirius reminded him, as they neared a group of Year 11 girls at the school gate, most of whom glanced appreciatively at his tall, elegant frame. They broke into excitable whispers as soon as they passed, and Sirius rolled his eyes.

Sirius was much sought-after by his peers, male and female alike, being both exceedingly handsome and exceptionally uninterested in dating, which, apparently, was an irresistible combination. His complete disinterest in romantic attachments had once set rumours flying around the school that he and James were engaging in a closeted love affair, which neither of them minded, but Evans had put an end to that when she turned up on the first day of Year 12 and it became glaringly obvious that James's type ran to redheaded women with incredible…brains.

"Someone else might want the job this year, though," said Peter worriedly, gnawing on the edge of his thumbnail. "I should text Helena, she'll probably want to audition."

"I think you'd be a pretty good Mercutio, actually," said Remus to Sirius. "What part do you think you'll read on Monday?"

"There's a decent scene in Act 2 with Benvolio, or maybe his death scene. I dunno. I'll make up my mind over the weekend."

"Not the whole weekend," James reminded him. "We've got work to do on the website. Peter's coming over tomorrow."

"Did you finish your sketches for the About page last night?"

"You know I didn't."

"And do you want to tell Pete and Remus _why_ you didn't finish them?"

"I was—" Sirius smiled evilly at him, and James scowled. "I had to walk Algernon."

"Past Evans's house," said Sirius. "Three times."

"That's where he likes to go!"

"He looks bloody stupid with that leash on, and you look even stupider holding it."

"You _do_ look stupid," Peter agreed. "Cats don't need leashes."

They reached the end of the short road which ran between the school and town, and turned onto the high street, where James discreetly checked his reflection in the window of Gregg's—still gorgeous—and pushed his glasses up his nose.

"He was getting fat, and he needed the exercise," he stoutly insisted. "Anyway, I'll do the sketches tonight. I've only got two to finish."

"Can't. We've got football tonight," Sirius reminded him.

"Did I mention that I hate living with you?"

"Love you too, mate," said Sirius, and slung an arm around his shoulders.

 **Act 1, Scene 3**

 _a classroom_

James didn't see Lily Evans again until right before last period, when he found her outside Binns's classroom, sitting on the floor next to Mary Macdonald. Mary had her phone out and was showing her a video—of one of her cats, no doubt. Macdonald loved her cats, though not one of them could match Algernon for intelligence, handsomeness or vengefulness.

James had never met any of Mary's cats, but he felt safe in assuming as much. No common moggy could hold a paw to Algernon, thoroughbred monarch of the feline world.

Lily and Mary had become fast friends on Evans's first day at Hogwarts, a little over a year ago, which James could recall as easily as if it were yesterday. There he had been, sat in Psychology next to Evan McNamee, deep in the throes of despair because he was bereft of his best friends for three out of four classes, when Evans breezed into the room like Venus emerging from her seashell in a black blazer and a pair of knee-high socks. Binns made her stand in front of the class, most of whom had sat their GCSEs at Hogwarts, and introduce herself; she'd offered a fiver to whomever could make a joke about gingers that she hadn't heard before, and James's susceptible little heart had been hers forever.

He didn't win the fiver—didn't even try, in fact, too stunned by the sudden appearance of a goddess in Binns's classroom to do anything other than stare at her in mute astonishment. Mary won by suggesting that you could save a ginger from drowning by taking your foot off their head, and Evans immediately handed over the cash, as promised.

"Are you gonna hand out money in all your other classes?" Eddie Bones had asked her, to which she'd laughed, a clear, sweet sound that James soon came to adore with a singular, wholehearted passion.

"That was all my lunch money," she'd replied, indicating the fiver, which Mary was waving triumphantly in the air. "So not bloody likely."

She'd won the entire class in less than five minutes.

"Hello," said James, approaching the two girls in the present day. He slung his bag on the ground with what he hoped was a sexy, Sirius-like nonchalance. Evans didn't look up from the phone, but Mary did, and greeted him with a curt nod.

"Alright, Potter?" she said. "Binns has locked us out."

He leaned, casual as you like, against the wall opposite. "Why?"

"Why do you think? He's still arranging his seating chart, nearly a week later," said Mary, and tucked a stray tendril of dark hair behind her ear. "A delicate operation that requires time, he says. Lily and I asked to be kept together."

Lily closed her eyes, dropped her head on Mary's shoulder and made a noise in the back of her throat that James would certainly imagine her purring in his ear when he had a moment to himself later, but not now. Now was the time to think of cold showers, his late grandmother's moustache and that slug he'd trodden on with his bare foot that one time, because the last thing he needed was to break out an erection when he was standing right in front of her and her eyes were about level with his nether regions.

And relax.

"She's a bit tired, is our Lily," Mary explained. "She's had a stressful day, you know. Some bloke proposed to her earlier. She had to turn him down."

"Ah," said James, his face burning. "Did she, now?"

Mary snorted. "What were you thinking, Potter?"

"The same thing I'm usually thinking—nothing," he explained. "I'm really sorry about that, incidentally."

Lily's eyes flicked open, prettily, which was how she did everything, and she observed him with an unreadable expression.

"Really, very sorry," he repeated blankly.

She blinked, evidently unimpressed by his contrition. "You've got sauce on your shirt."

He looked down. Sure enough, there was a large, undeniably bright ketchup stain on his pristine white shirt. As if he hadn't embarrassed himself in front of Evans enough today, life just had to throw the hallmark of a sloppy eater into the fray.

"Fucking chicken nugget share-box," he spat, and started scrubbing at it with his tie, which made Mary laugh, though Evans remained impassive.

That was how you knew you had no hope with the girl you loved, he sadly reflected, when she won't laugh with you _or_ at you, because she simply doesn't care enough.

The way in which Evans affected James was severe and, until the day they'd met, utterly unprecedented. Raised by two devoted, doting parents who had lost all hope of having a child until he came along, he had grown up knowing that he was special, and had the titles to prove it—miracle baby, advanced toddler, gifted child, exceptional student, superb athlete, talented artist, _and_ an apex predator on the popularity food chain, with the best mates a bloke could ask for to boot. It wasn't until Evans came along that he discovered a new and vexing facet to his personality: total fucking idiot.

Life had been a repeating loop of disasters since she walked into Psychology, first, because his worst enemy turned out to be her best friend from childhood, and second, because he immediately fell victim to a compulsion to seek out her attention, and did so in stupid, humiliating ways, which led to unwelcome feelings, such as self-doubt and incompetence. Everyone who knew about his feelings for Lily, including his own mother, thought it was utterly hilarious. He got no sympathy at all, which was appalling. Remus had even suggested that Evans had brought about a marked improvement in his attitude.

"Your neuroses have made you more bearable, to be honest," he'd told him once, after he and his mates had shared a bottle of premium Russian vodka, courtesy of Sirius. "I mean, I love you to death, but sometimes I want to put a paper bag on your head and leave you in a dark room."

The door to the classroom opened, and Binns popped his head out, peering at the assembled students behind his huge, milk-bottle spectacles. The summer hadn't been kind to Binns; his skin was papery-white, and he looked more like a Dickensian ghost than ever.

"Come in, one at a time," he instructed. "Look for the chair with your name on it. You'll be sitting there for the rest of the year."

Of course, the entire class surged towards the door as one, excepting Lily and Mary, who had stood up and were brushing themselves off. James headed straight for the top of the classroom, assuming Binns would place him there because most of his teachers insisted upon it. A quick scan of the desks yielded no results, however, so he worked backwards and found nothing until he reached the back row and located his name—in fine, bold print on a yellow post-it—placed primly on the chair that sat next to a very stoic, very unhappy-looking Lily Evans.

Thus, James died and went to heaven—though thankfully, not in a literal sense. That would have been traumatic for everyone in the classroom, even Lily, who couldn't stand him. Five hours a week spent sitting next to Evans was a delightful prospect, and James felt that he could have hugged Binns, if he wasn't certain that one hug would break him into a million pieces like a delicate china vase.

"Hi," he said, and tried to look as if he wasn't in raptures over the whole affair.

Lily didn't need to expend any effort to appear distressed. "Hi."

He sat down on the post-it, which he hoped she didn't notice, and plonked his bag on top of the desk.

"How was your summer?" he asked, while he dug around for supplies. His mum had packed his bag fresh on Monday, but already it was a chaotic jumble of books, pens, sweet wrappers, and balled-up pieces of paper. The only well-maintained item in his bag was his portfolio, which he kept carefully concealed inside a large, plastic wallet.

She shrugged.

"I saw—" he began, then hesitated. 'I saw you at the lido' translated almost directly to 'I saw you in a bikini and have been revisiting the memory on a nightly basis,' which wasn't how he wanted to endear himself to her. "—the new Adam Sandler film, a couple of weeks ago."

At the head of the class, Binns was conducting his usual pre-class routine: searching for his misplaced notes. Lily turned her head and threw James a look of deep confusion.

She had gotten her ears pierced over the summer, he noted—little garnets that glinted merrily in her lobes—and was so pretty that it was almost easier _not_ to look at her lest he be overcome by a fit of embarrassment, no doubt caused by the butterflies that had set up camp in his stomach.

"It was shit," he said emphatically. He didn't know where he was going with this line of conversation, not least because he avoided Adam Sandler films like the plague, and wasn't sure if one had even come out over the summer. He slid his textbook onto the desk and stashed his bag beneath his feet. "If you were thinking of going—"

"I wasn't."

"Just thought I'd warn you, you know, in case you tripped and fell into a screening on your way to a thoughtful foreign language film. I wouldn't want you seeing it by accident."

Lily's brows knit together in consternation. "He's an actor, not the Ebola virus."

"Which is worse, though?"

"The Ebola virus," she immediately responded.

"Well, yeah," James admitted. "But if you consider them in terms of their respective fields..."

"What? The field of disease, versus the field of acting-slash-comedy?"

"Is Ebola really the _worst_ disease?"

"It's right up there with smallpox and the Black Death, actually," Lily pointed out. "Whereas _The Wedding Singer_ was a really good movie. So, no, I _wouldn't_ say that Adam Sandler is the Ebola virus of Hollywood."

"Who is, then?"

Lily sighed, heavily, the way James's mother used to do when he was six-years-old and thought an appropriate response to everything she said was, "Why?" followed by an impassioned appeal for Cadbury's chocolate fingers. "I don't know, Potter. Roman Polanski?"

"Well, then," said James. "I will Google Roman Polanski and get back to you on that."

"Right," began Binns, pointing with purpose at his notes, which he was holding so close to his nose that they mostly obscured his face. He took a deep, rattling breath. "To continue our previous study on infant-caregiver interactions during the formative months of—"

Lily leaned forward and started taking notes, her long, ginger hair trailing against the surface of the desk, and James knew her well enough from observation to know that he'd lost her—that _anyone_ would have lost her, even Mary. Lily didn't talk during class, unless it was in direct response to a teacher.

Still, he'd gotten her to engage, _and_ gleaned enough information to start a conversation with her before Monday's class. He just needed to look up that Polanski bloke, and possibly watch _The Wedding Singer_ , if he had time.

Not bad for his first week back, he decided. Not bad at all.


	2. NAY GENTLE ROMEO, WE MUST HAVE YOU DANCE

**CHAPTER TWO: NAY, GENTLE ROMEO, WE MUST HAVE YOU DANCE**

 **Act 2, Scene 1**

 _James Potter's bedroom_

The website, which was yet to be named in an official way and most often referred to as "the map," or alternatively, "this fucking website is ruining my life," had been James's idea. He and his mates had been working on it since February and intended to go live after Christmas, but that goal would have been beyond their reach were it not for Peter Pettigrew.

Peter was their coding wizard, possessing a power to convert ones and zeros into big, beautiful realities that proved invaluable to the project. The others had vital roles to play—James did the artwork, Sirius wrote the content, and Remus edited, researched, kept them focused and separated the bad ideas from the truly terrible—but Peter shouldered the bulk of the work, and was arguably their most invaluable asset.

That had done a lot for his confidence.

So had losing his virginity before the rest of his friends. Peter liked to point that out often, lest they forget that he was actively fornicating.

James wanted to ruminate on a sexually potent Peter about as much as he wanted to die of scurvy, because it was disgusting, and because he was jealous, not of Peter's relationship with Helena—also known as Yoko, previously known as James's Year 11 stalker—but of Peter's accomplishment. James had never even touched a boob in real life, let alone had sex, and the only girl he wanted was so far out of his league that he'd have to ascend to the stratosphere on the back of a unicorn just to wind up on her radar.

Saturday night saw Peter stop by James's house for further work on the site as planned, only James had devoted himself to mooning all day, and forgotten that Peter was coming. The optimism that Evans had instilled within his heart had ebbed away on Friday night because, after obsessively texting Remus for a few hours, he had been forced to accept that he had merely confused her into a conversation, and as Remus pointed out, that wasn't grounds to start planning the wedding.

After that, he must have gotten sick of James's complaints because he'd started to reply with things like _Remus died thirty years ago_ and _new phone who is this?_ which meant he was extremely vexed and wanted James to go away.

With Sirius at work and James sulking in his room, it fell to his mum to greet Peter at the front door and escort him upstairs.

"There he is," she announced, having thrown his door open. "My precious little angel, wasting his life and his weekend away, though not masturbating, thank god. I'm so afraid of catching him in the act."

From his bed, where he was propped up by a mound of pillows, James hit pause on his remote and looked at her.

"Do you know what my biggest fear is?" he told her, with a sweet smile. "Having a Chelsea fan for a mother."

"I've had to contend with having an Arsenal fan for a son and I survived."

"Only because you spend so much time torturing me."

"Better toughen up. We're having dinner when Sirius gets back, so come downstairs as soon as I call you or I'll wear my Frank Lampard jersey to your wedding."

"Then I won't get married."

"Fine. I'll wear it to your funeral when you die a lonely virgin."

"Double fine. Can Pete stay for dinner?"

"I've already invited him," she said, and trailed out of the room, letting the door swing shut behind her. James could hear her laughing as she headed down the stairs.

Peter scratched idly at his thin, blonde hair. "What's bakaliaros?"

"That means it's Mum's night to cook."

"I assumed it was something Greek."

"It's nothing fancy, just battered cod. Have you ever seen this film?"

"What is it?"

 _"The Wedding Singer,"_ said James, and hit the play button. The protagonist resumed his ireful ballad about a woman who left him at the altar, to which James felt he could relate. Not that he'd ever been left at the altar in real life, but Lily had probably done it to him in a dream or something. "That's Adam Sandler."

"I know who Adam Sandler is."

"He plays a wedding singer who falls in love with Drew Barrymore even though she's already engaged to this other bloke who cheats on her a lot and only cares about material things, so Adam Sandler sings her a romantic song on a plane because nobody cared about airport security in the 80s, and they get married in the end."

"Great," said Peter, in a flat tone. "Now I don't need to see it."

"I watched it already this morning."

"Yeah, Remus warned me that you might have gone down the rabbit hole."

"Don't mention rabbits in front of You-Know-Who." James nodded towards his cat, who was dozing lightly beside him. "You'll get him all worked up."

Algernon yawned in response, and Peter crossed the room to perch on the end of James's bed.

"I know that Evans said she liked this film," he began. "But—"

"She said it was really good," James corrected him. "And she hates the Ebola virus."

"Everybody hates the Ebola virus. It killed thousands of people in West Africa."

James shrugged. "I don't know what I'm supposed to be learning from this film, except that she likes love."

"Everyone except Sirius likes love."

"Not true. Sirius enjoys love in an abstract way," said James, and pointed in the vague direction of his bookcase which, not being a big reader, he used mostly to store art supplies and his board game collection. "All of those rom-coms on the top shelf are his."

"I thought he was into horror films?"

"That's what he tells people. He's watched _The Proposal_ about five times since he moved in."

"Sandra Bullock is delightful, I suppose."

James took a fruitless swig from his water bottle, which he had emptied over an hour ago and attempted to drink from three times since. "I thought that if I watched this film I'd know what to say to Evans on Monday, but now I think I'll sound like a creepy arsehole who watched the same film twice in one day to impress her."

"That _is_ what you are."

"She doesn't have to know that," he murmured. "Jesus, Peter."

"Watching a movie she likes isn't going to teach you anything useful."

"I know."

"And I don't know why you're so against having a normal conversation."

"I tried that. Doesn't work."

"You haven't tried it. You try big public declarations, and as an authority on the subject—"

"You've had one girlfriend, calm down."

"As an _authority_ on the subject, I say it's better to be honest when it comes to girls. Like, if you went up to her and said you've had a crush on her for a long time and that it makes you act like a tit sometimes, but that you're sorry and you want to be mates."

This sounded like terrible advice, so James sank backwards into his pillows and crossed his arms. His silent mutiny lasted for ten minutes, at which point he realised that Peter had gotten invested in the movie and didn't care that he was being ignored.

"What's going on with Remus?" he said, transitioning clumsily into a new topic. Remus had been strangely uncommunicative since yesterday afternoon, even cancelling on the cinema trip they'd arranged for Sunday, claiming to have forgotten and made plans with his family. This was odd because Remus had arranged the trip in the first place, and he never forgot anything.

"Don't know," said Peter. "He's been acting weird."

"He didn't turn up to football last night. I thought it might be his heart again, but he said he feels fine."

"He said that the doctor was happy after his last check-up, remember?"

"Yeah."

"But it wouldn't be the first time he's lied about it," Peter reminded him, looking concerned.

"No." James frowned. "But he wouldn't lie now, would he?"

"Boys!" cried Euphemia from downstairs. "Dinner!"

James scrambled up and tossed his empty bottle at Peter. "Come on, she throws your food out if you take more than two minutes to get downstairs."

They found Sirius in the kitchen, leaning against the dishwasher with a can of Coke in hand, dressed in the pink t-shirt he wore for work. James almost wished that he could make fun of it, but laughing at gender stereotypes was stupid. Also, Sirius was really pulling it off.

"Hah!" cried Peter, less elegant in his approach. "It's Malibu Barbie!"

"Bore off," said Sirius.

James's mother paused in the act of shaking grease from the chip pan and pointed toward the dining room. "One of you take those plates, the other can take the green beans and carrots," she instructed. "And leave Sirius alone, he's been working hard all day while you two lazed around."

"I did stuff today," said James resentfully.

"What? Scratched your arse more than once? Go inside," his mother repeated, then flashed Sirius an indulgent smile. "You too, but give your new mummy a hug first."

Sirius sauntered over to the stove and smirked at James when Euphemia planted a kiss on his cheek. "I'm the favourite now."

"That's pity, not love," James breezily informed him, stack of plates in hand. He strode into the dining room, with Peter close behind, and together they started to set the table. His father was already seated at the head of the table, and had his nose buried in his iPad.

"Hi, Dad," said James.

"Hello, Peter! How have you been?" said Fleamont, and pushed his glasses up his nose to observe Peter better. "You're looking well."

"I'm doing well, thanks."

"I'm fine also, Dad, thanks for asking," said James. "Just your only child, but whatever."

"What level have you reached on _Candy Crush?_ I got to 274 before Euphemia saw the iTunes bill. She's banned it now."

Peter and Fleamont launched into a discussion about overpriced mobile games, and James, having finished the exhausting task of setting a table, dropped into his usual chair with a wide yawn. Sirius came in, set down a wire rack of condiments and took the seat next to him, sliding a fresh can of Coke towards his elbow.

"You alright?" he said.

James nodded. "How was work?"

"Work was work. Boring. Bunches of stupid kids hanging around all day. They don't even buy anything."

"That's why you should quit."

"I'm not quitting."

"What was the point of you moving in if I can't even hang out with you on weekends?"

"The point was to monopolise your mother's love, kill you and assume your identity."

"Oh, don't do _that,"_ cooed Euphemia, who had come in carrying two large serving trays. "I suppose I'd miss him if he weren't around."

James pulled a face. "You suppose?"

"Try coming out of your bedroom every now and then, and maybe I'll love you more."

"I'm officially withholding my love until he mows the lawn like he promised," said Fleamont.

"Here, give me your glasses," said Sirius, and held his hand out, palm facing up. "I want to see if they suit me."

"It wouldn't work," said Peter. "How would you replicate his hair? You'd have to cut yours, and even then, it's far too neat."

"I'll stick my finger in a plug socket every morning."

"I don't think my hair's the defining physical difference between us, mate," James reminded him.

"I'll say I got vitiligo."

"Such a clever boy," said Euphemia fondly. "I don't see vegetables on your plate, James."

James sighed, and reached for the carrots. He couldn't understand why his mother insisted upon ruining fish and chips with these needless, healthy additions. "Why don't you tell Sirius to have more vegetables?"

"Sirius took a boxed salad to work with him today," said Euphemia. "You had three bowls of Sugar Puffs."

"Speaking of work," said Sirius, who was shaking the vinegar bottle over his chips in what appeared to be an attempt to waterboard his dinner. "Macdonald stopped by today and told me something interesting."

"Is it that you're a prick?"

"Language, James," his father reprimanded.

"It was about Evans, actually. She said something nice about you, but you bloody well can sing for it now."

James let his knife and fork drop to his plate with a clang, for this was Big News, and all present must remain silent to receive it. "What did she say?"

"My feelings are too hurt to remember."

He briefly considered stabbing Sirius with his fork to make him talk. The idea that Lily Evans could say something nice about him and that Sirius would happily sit on that news to torture him was...well, torturous. His best mate was a talented man. "You're lying."

"How else would I know that you were talking some sort of crap about how Adam Sandler was the next Ebola? You neglected to share that piece of information when you replayed your conversation over and over and over last night until I wanted to die."

Euphemia's eyes lit up with an avaricious glee. She lived for gossip like this. "You talked to Lily Evans and you didn't tell me?"

"Is that why you've been watching _The Wedding Singer_ all afternoon?" put in his father.

James picked up an ambitious handful of chips and stuffed them into his mouth to avoid answering for his crimes.

"He bombarded her," said Sirius, "with nonsense."

"And did he tell you about his big romantic gesture?" said Peter, snorting with mirth. "When he got down on one knee in the middle of class and asked her to give him a pen?"

James hastily swallowed what he could and sprayed what he couldn't. "It was _my_ pen in the first place!"

"What was she doing with your pen?" said Euphemia. "Did you plant it on her? So that you'd have an excuse to talk?"

"May I be excused?" said James, deeply hurt by his mother's assumption that he would resort to subterfuge to get Evans to talk to him. He stood up and pushed his chair away from the table. "I have to go and throw myself out of a window."

"Oh, relax," said Sirius, and laid a placating hand on his arm. "She said that you were funny yesterday."

James's plan to hide in a crawlspace for the evening dissolved on the spot, which was just as well. The house didn't have a crawlspace. "For real?"

"For real."

"But did she mean funny 'ha-ha' or 'there's a weird smell coming from somewhere' funny?"

"The good kind of funny."

"Are you sure?"

"I didn't make Macdonald sign an affidavit because I didn't have my special legal papers to hand, but yeah, since she came in just to tell me about it, I'm pretty sure it was meant to be good news."

Like a sunbeam peeping from behind a cloud to drench the earth in warmth, James's earlier glee returned in full force. He sat back down, picked up his cutlery and smiled beatifically at everyone and everything in the room, even the green beans and carrots, though he passionately hated both. He would be willing to eat bowlfuls of carrots if it made Monday come sooner because Lily Evans thought he was funny and that meant a world of possibilities had opened before him, as vast and resplendent as a non-frightening Jurassic Park.

"She thinks I'm funny," he said to Sirius. "Do you know what that means?"

"That you're going to smile at me like that all night?"

"Yes."

"And make me repeat what Mary said a million times?"

"Yes."

"Permission to have an alcoholic beverage?" said Sirius, turning desperately to James's mother for help. "I can't handle him like this."

"Oh, sweetie," said Euphemia, and gave Sirius's hand a sympathetic pat. "What kind of mug do you take me for?"

 **Act 2, Scene 2**

 _the back of Binns's classroom_

Psychology was James's first class on a Monday morning, but it wasn't Lily's. She and Mary had Law first period, which he knew because he had committed her schedule to memory on the first day of term. It had not been intentional. James couldn't help that Lily's timetable had crawled into his head and taken a steadfast hold. He couldn't tell his brain to stop being brilliant. It _wasn't_ stalking. Remus was a liar.

As adept as his brain had proved in retaining information—some useful, most of it garbage—punctuality wasn't his strong suit, and he was known for it, but he tried a little harder where Evans was concerned. Thus, while he wasn't surprised to see Mary and Lily enter Binns's classroom with twenty minutes to kill before class started, they were taken aback to see him.

It wasn't stalking. His friends were trying to make him paranoid. He had every right to turn up early for class and wait for her to arrive.

"You're here early," said he and Mary simultaneously, and their faces split into identical grins.

"Monday class is only thirty minutes," Macdonald explained, and lifted her Costa cup into the air. "We got tea. What are you doing here at twenty to ten? Did Sirius wake you up? Was he doing naked lunges in your room?"

"Er." James pulled a face. "No?"

"What a shame," said Mary. She elbowed Lily in the side. "Go sit with your boyfriend."

Evans had been staring stonily at the wall with her cup pressed to her chest. She did that a lot with hot drinks, James had noticed, though very rarely with cold. She glared at Mary. "Really? That's what we're doing now? What age are you?"

"Seventeen. Same as you, but I act like it."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning, lighten up." Mary removed two fingers from her cup to push Evans in the direction of her desk, and by extension, James. "And go sit."

Lily did sit, but with a face like thunder, and Mary flounced over to her own desk to deposit her drink and her bag.

"Oh, dear," she said loudly, once done. "I've just remembered that I urgently need the bathroom for some reason!" She bounded to the classroom door. "I guess I'll need to leave you two alone!"

Mary's motives—much as James appreciated them—were so transparent that she might as well have knocked their heads together and screamed, "Now kiss!" though that hadn't worked out so well the last time she tried. Evans had been properly scary, that day.

She wasn't scary now, though, slumped against the desk with her head in her hands. He wondered if something bad had happened, or if the sight of his face had been all it took to ruin her morning. Probably the latter. He never wanted to upset her, but he seemed to have such a talent for it.

"Are you alright, Evans?"

She didn't respond.

"I feel like this is all my fault, what with the fake proposal and everything."

"Not your fault," she murmured.

James had dreamed up many hilarious and interesting statements with which to break the ice over the weekend, but he couldn't remember most of them, and the ones he could recall seemed trite in the cold light of day. What he did have, however, was a brown paper bag of breakfast items that he'd bought as a backup. Everyone liked breakfast.

He moved the bag to the middle of the desk and nudged it towards her with his elbow, until it brushed against her arm and she lifted her head to see what had touched her.

"Oh, hello there," he said, as if he'd only just seen her. "Would you like a hash brown to go with your tea?"

"What?"

"I bought a whole lot from McDonald's this morning. You can have as many as you like."

Lily looked at him suspiciously. Her hair was gathered in an intricate braid today, and the garnets in her ears had been swapped for emeralds. James didn't know if they were real or not, but they were pretty, and matched her eyes almost exactly.

"No," she said. "I don't—actually, yeah." She grabbed the bag. "I'm starving. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"Can I take one of the little salt packets?"

"Sure."

"Brilliant." She fished one out of the bag with her thumb and forefinger. "Back in a second."

Whereupon, Lily Evans rose to her feet, sprinted to the other side of the room, prised the lid from Macdonald's cup and tipped the entire sachet of salt into her tea—with a look of savage gratification on her face—then returned to the desk as if she'd merely taken a stroll.

"Thanks again," she said, and stuffed an entire hash brown into her mouth.

James could have proposed on the spot, and for real this time.

Who knew that Lily Evans had a vengeful streak? _He_ had a vengeful streak, and people were always telling him that a mature adult wouldn't stoop to such behaviour, but Evans was very mature, especially when compared to James. She was the student council president. He had seen her checking her schedule in her iPhone calendar. She occasionally wore a wristwatch.

He stared at her while she devoured his food, blissfully ignorant to the fact that she was ruining and enhancing his life in equal measure, and with all the subtle delicacy of a hydrostatic bulldozer.

"That was brilliant," he told her. _Not just brilliant. Spectacular. We should get married young and have children because it would be a disservice to the world if we didn't pass on our genes. I'm very rich so money is no object and have I mentioned that I love you?_

She sucked some grease off the end of her finger and half-smiled at him. "Thanks."

"And not what I would have expected," he added. "From you, I mean."

"You don't know me all that well," she said, shrugging. "Besides, Mary had it coming."

"For calling me your boyfriend?"

"Among other things."

"Like what?"

"Like, I can't tell you because it's private?"

He shrugged. "Fair enough."

Lily took a sip of her own tea and heaved her schoolbag onto the desk to unpack her things, which James took for the clear sign it was—conversation over—though the silence that fell between them was companionable for once, not the frozen, insurmountable chasm he was used to. They even shared a secretive smile when Mary, upon her return from the bathroom break that never was, took a huge, gluttonous mouthful of tea, gagged, and spat it all over Terry Heaney, who had just taken his seat beside her.

This, he realised, made for the second semi-normal conversation they'd had since the beginning of term, which made for a huge improvement on last year's record of zero.

This was progress.

Progress was good.

 **Act 2, Scene 3**

 _one of many corridors_

Following the success of double Psychology—Evans had eaten two more hash browns and bade him goodbye after class with great civility—James decided to take advantage of the freedoms of sixth form by skipping the rest of the day and getting drunk on his mum's secret stash of peppermint schnapps to celebrate, but Sirius put the kibosh on that plan immediately. He had that stupid audition to attend and insisted that James come along to offer moral support.

Obviously, he was lying. Sirius had skin thick enough to repel bullets. He didn't need moral support to flaunt about onstage in a pair of pantaloons, he just resented the idea of any of his mates drinking without him.

James, though, prided himself on supporting his friends, so he agreed to hang around outside Croaker's classroom to wait for Sirius and, as it happened, Mary, who also took Classical Civilisation, and made a beeline for him as soon as she stepped into the corridor.

"What's up, smooth operator?" she said, and biffed him on the arm, grinning. "You dog, you!"

"What?" said James.

"Buying Lily breakfast was such a _move_."

"Such a sad, desperate move," said Sirius, who had come up behind her.

"Don't mind him, he's a prick with no heart. We were talking about it in class—"

"Shouldn't you have been paying attention?" said James, sounding quite unlike himself and more like Remus—which reminded him, he needed to go to Remus's house after the auditions were done and check up on him, because he was still being weird. He'd scooted off after English Lit that afternoon without so much as a backwards glance. Sirius thought it was probably nothing, but James and Peter were still concerned.

"Nah, mate," said Sirius. "Debate was a big deal in ancient Greece. It was field work."

"Sirius has taken the ridiculous position that you're a sad arsehole, while _I've_ taken the position that you and Lily would make a cute couple," said Mary proudly, stroking her own chest. "You should stop choosing your mates from a pool of dickheads."

"Yeah," James agreed, with a glare for Sirius. "Maybe I'll find a best mate who doesn't force me to go to an audition with him when I could be at home relaxing."

"Are you not going to audition too?" said Mary.

James pulled a face. "And give up all my free time?"

"That's a shame," she sighed. "I'm not auditioning either, but I've got to support my girl Bee, and I can't pass up a chance to watch this idiot make a fool of himself." She slipped her arm through the crook of James's elbow. "You can walk me there, can't you?"

He didn't have much choice, as Mary steered him down the corridor with surprising strength for such a diminutive pixie of a girl, Sirius bringing up the rear and making all kinds of disapproving noises because he wasn't getting any attention.

"So," she said, with a sly tint to her voice. "How were your hash browns this morning?"

"How was your tea?"

"Oh, that." Mary tossed her head, with a brusque laugh. "We're at a delicate stage of our prank war—"

"You and Evans are in a _prank war?"_

"Correction—Lily and I are in a prank war that I'm _winning_. Didn't she tell you?"

"She said her reasons were private."

"Hah!" Mary barked. "She was just being mysterious."

Just once, he thought, it would be nice to learn something new about Evans that _didn't_ plunge him deeper into the fatal quicksand of unrequited love. He wanted to ask Mary more about her, specifically if she'd said anything about class that morning, but Sirius—who would always try to change the subject when Evans was mentioned in conversation—butted in to ask if Mary was in charge of costumes for the play, which apparently she was, which led to a conversation about upcycling that James didn't understand, so he zoned out and started to plan an inspirational speech that he would recite later, should Remus happen to be sick again.

The music room on the ground floor was less of a room and more of an auditorium, with a stage, ample audience seating, a rarely used piano and a random assortment of hard-backed chairs that had been dragged in from other classrooms. Other students had already gathered inside by the time James, Mary and Sirius arrived, including Beatrice Booth, who had perched on the edge of some choir steps that had been pushed against the wall, doing what appeared to be a breathing exercise with her eyes closed. Evans was beside her, manning a copy of the play and a bottle of water.

That was another thing that she and James had in common—aside from the surprising prank war revelation—they were both such supportive friends. Lily was so kind. He loved her.

"That's me," said Mary, and gave James's arm a squeeze. "See you both later!"

As she tripped off towards her friends, James took a quick scan of the room and, to his immense surprise, found the very last person he expected to see.

"Remus?"

In the front row of the stalls, Remus sat with his head bent over the book that was clenched in his hands, reciting something under his breath. He looked up when James and Sirius approached him, and turned a delicate shade of pink.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi," James echoed. "What are you doing here?"

"He's auditioning," said Sirius. "As Romeo. Forgot to tell you."

James spun around. "You _knew_ about this?!"

Sirius shrugged. "I never said it was _me_ who needed moral support."

"McGonagall asked me to do it on Friday," said Remus quietly. "That's what the meeting was about. She said she wanted students who could understand what they were reading and not just recite their lines like empty-headed baboons."

"She also said that it'd be good for his self-esteem," said Sirius, with a crafty smile.

"Thanks, mate," said Remus. "I told you that in confidence, but whatever."

"Why didn't you tell me?" James demanded, feeling betrayed.

"Because I hadn't properly made up my mind until this morning, and because I wanted to spend the weekend practicing without being made fun of."

"I wouldn't have made fun of you!" Even as the words left his mouth he knew they weren't entirely true. His theory that he and Evans were equally supportive friends shrank a little in the wash. "Why tell Sirius and not me?"

"I'm auditioning too, if you hadn't noticed," said Sirius. "Why would I make fun of Remus for doing the same thing?"

"So you knew all weekend and didn't tell me?"

"He asked me to keep schtum."

"Oh, suddenly you're an expert secret keeper, are you? But you told everyone that I walked Algernon past Lily's house?"

"That's because it was funny."

"Say it a little louder, James," said Remus. "I think there's a sheep farmer in Mongolia who didn't hear you."

With fear gripping at his throat, James whipped around to see if Lily had heard his shameful secret, but she was toying absently with the end of her braid while Mary chattered away about something, and did not appear to have noticed.

Remus and Sirius, though, were laughing at him.

"You're both pricks," he informed them, face burning.

"Thanks," said Remus, grinning. "Are you going to wish me luck?"

He scowled darkly at his mates, but it was hard to stay mad at Remus for too long because he was generally such a good bloke, and because James _would_ have made fun of him, and didn't feel he had much of a moral high ground to preach upon.

"Yeah," he eventually conceded, though begrudgingly. "Yeah, alright. Break a leg, mate."

A hush fell over the room, and James looked up to see that McGonagall had swept through the double doors, followed closely by Ms. Vector, who taught Drama and Dance. He and Sirius hurriedly took their seats on either side of Remus.

"Good afternoon," said McGonagall.

"Afternoon," the students responded, with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

"Ms. Vector and I will be directing this production, which will take place on the evening of the fifteenth of December. Following today's auditions, we'll meet back here on Wednesday after school to announce the cast list. If you don't show up on Wednesday and you don't have a good reason to be absent, your part, assuming you get one, will be given to somebody else."

She strode over to the piano and dropped her copy of the play on its glossy lid. Vector, meanwhile, had grabbed a stray chair and sat down, with an open notebook balanced on her knee.

"First thing's first, the obvious," McGonagall continued. "Can I get a show of hands from all those reading for the role of Juliet today?"

Ten, fifteen, more than twenty hands shot into the air. Grace Styles and Jennifer Costner both had theirs up, as did Helena, and the Stebbins twins—James couldn't tell which was Charlotte and which was Charlene—and Isabella Marks, who he'd dated for a couple of months last year, and Camelia Pinkstone, and Alice Parker and…

Lily.

Lily had put her hand up.

Lily Evans, of all people, was auditioning for Juliet.

James was genuinely shocked.

He never would have expected Evans to audition for a play, or for any extracurricular activity which might deplete her study time. She was an immensely focused student. She used free periods to do coursework in the common room, which made her quite unique, as far as students went, and she hadn't done the panto last year, and it was Booth who wanted to be an actress, but Booth hadn't put her hand up at all.

She was going to get the part.

Of course she would.

It was like McGonagall said to Remus, she needed people who understood what they were reading, and Evans would obviously meet that criteria. She always had interesting things to say about the texts they studied, and McGonagall _loved_ her, and was bound to give her preferential treatment.

Not to mention, she was easily the fittest girl in the entire school, and though James didn't know much about Shakespeare, he was switched-on enough to assume that Juliet had to be pretty. There were a lot of pretty girls at Hogwarts, but only one of them was Evans. Only she was Venus in her shell. She had no competition. Unless she was the worst actress in the world, James would stake his house, his cat and his signed Thierry Henry jersey that the part was already hers.

"Keep them up," McGonagall barked, while Vector hastened to write down the names. "I must say, I am forever astonished that so many of the young ladies are willing to kiss _any_ of these boys in their personal time, much less on stage, but I thank you all for your enthusiasm."

A laugh rippled through the girls, and Sirius. The other boys responded with stony, insulted silence.

"Done," said Vector.

"Lovely." McGonagall gestured for the girls to lower their hands. "Can I have the same from our potential Romeos?"

Eight hands went up, including those of Evan McNamee, Terry Heaney, and Remus—though his was a timid, embarrassed attempt, as though he was already regretting his decision to do it—but among the eight, James noticed one raised hand that shocked and confused him far, far more than Remus Lupin's.

His own.


	3. BEING IN NIGHT, ALL THIS IS BUT A DREAM

**CHAPTER THREE: BEING IN NIGHT, ALL THIS IS BUT A DREAM**

 **Act 3, Scene 1**

 _the music room on the ground floor_

He'd made a huge mistake.

James knew it as soon as he launched his hand skywards, like a rocket doomed to explode once it broke the sound barrier, this blazing beacon of his own desperation, but he didn't put it down.

He wanted to put it down. He was sure he wanted to. He didn't want to commit himself to any school production, especially one that didn't involve big musical numbers and uniquely choreographed dance routines. He had nothing prepared. Moreover, he hadn't even read the play yet. Finally, he had fulfilled his mother's darkest predictions and blundered his way into public humiliation, all because he couldn't keep it in his pants for a girl.

Were his hand a sentient being, he could not have been less in control.

Luckily, only two people in the room knew that he had come with no intention of auditioning, so to the rest of the room, and Evans most importantly, he wasn't immediately coming off like a lunatic stalker. Only Sirius and Remus would know, and they...

Then it hit him, as hard as the golf ball Peter had inadvertently sent flying in his direction during their last game of pitch and putt, the one that had smacked his chest like a mallet and left him with a badly bruised collarbone.

Remus.

He had forgotten about Remus.

 _Buggering shit._

It was painful to think that not five minutes ago, he had been comforting himself with the notion that he and Evans were equally considerate of their friends, when now it must have appeared to Remus as if his thunder was being stolen from right beneath his nose. This made him a scoundrel, as well as a fool, and guilt bled into the hideous cocktail that careened freely through his veins.

"Hands down!" came McGonagall's command, and James dropped his arm like it held a lead weight. He turned to Remus with great contrition and found that his friend was already watching him, his face divulging no emotion at all.

"I've betrayed you," he murmured.

Remus's eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch.

"I didn't mean to," he continued, hoping that his morose expression would convey how deeply he wished he wasn't a shit. "My hand did it by itself."

Sirius, who was listening, let out a sudden laugh that sounded like a labrador's bark, and clamped his mouth shut.

"Excuse me, Mr. Black?" called McGonagall. "Do you care to tell the rest of us what exactly has tickled you so?"

Sirius shook his head. His lips were still pressed tightly together. Remus's shoulders had started to twitch.

"Very well," said McGonagall tartly. "Now, obviously, we can't have eight Romeos and twenty-two Juliets, so some of you may be called back later to read for other—"

"His hand did it by itself," Sirius whispered.

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard," Remus seconded.

"More like his cock."

"I've betrayed you!"

Sirius couldn't help it this time; he spluttered out another, louder laugh and sank back against his chair, muffling the sound with the back of his hand.

"Black!" McGonagall's voice cracked through the air like a firework this time. Several people jumped. "I'm giving you one more chance before I throw you out of this room!"

Then she glared at James as if he was responsible for his mate's misbehaviour, which he supposed he was, but it was still dead unfair of her to assume as much. He was being laughed _at,_ not with, which technically counted as bullying. If anything, McGonagall's duty of care meant that she should have been showing him sympathy.

While Sirius forced out an apology and assured the teachers that he was taking the auditions seriously, James chanced a glance at Evans. Her head was resting on Booth's shoulder while she read silently from her copy of the play, paying as little attention to him as usual, but on the other side of her was Mary, who met his gaze and smiled in a smug, knowing way which reminded James that he'd told her that he wasn't auditioning.

That made three people who knew the truth. Mary must have known that Evans was going to read for Juliet and kept it from him on purpose, perhaps to orchestrate a scene just like this one. She was probably going to tell Lily why he'd put up his hand, and when she did, the girl he loved would know for sure that he had stabbed his friend in the back for a shot at kissing her.

This was it, then. He was going to go down in history as a backstabbing virgin and it served him right for trying to steal Remus's part after Sirius had specifically instructed him to provide only emotional support. Finally outdone by karmic justice, he leaned forwards and buried his head in his hands, rubbing at his eyes beneath his glasses.

"Don't worry, mate," said Remus quietly, once McGonagall had wrapped up her scolding and moved on, though amusement was evident in his voice still. Unlike Sirius, he could always be counted upon to control his laughter in a perilous-yet-comedic situation, "I'm not angry."

James groaned into his hands.

"I knew he'd do it," said Sirius.

"Same."

"As soon as she put her hand up."

"Silly old sod," said Remus, and patted his back in a comforting, dad-like kind of way that only served to make James feel guiltier.

"Stupid wanker, more like," put in Sirius.

"What are you going to do?" Remus pressed on. "Have you read the play yet?"

"No." James sat up and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "What am I supposed to do?"

"Find a TARDIS, go back in time and be less of a prick," suggested Sirius.

"Leave him alone. He can borrow my copy if he needs it."

"Are you seriously suggesting that he go up there and audition with nowt prepared?"

"Why not? He's already the most melodramatic person we know," Remus reasoned, and though James was sure there was an insult in there somehow, now wasn't the time to bring it up. "He'll be a natural on stage."

"But I don't know a thing about plays," said James worriedly, "or Shakespeare, or anything. Evans is probably taking this dead seriously and I'm going to look like I'm taking the piss."

"It'll be fine," said Remus. "You at least know what the play is about, right?"

"I know that they fall in love."

"And?"

"Get married?"

"Yes, and?"

"Live happily ever after?"

Remus gave a dry husk of a laugh. "In the kids' version with the garden gnomes, maybe."

"Shut up," said Sirius. "Vector's coming."

James was forced to sit in an anxiety-ridden silence while Vector and McGonagall took details from those students who hadn't put their hands up for the two leading roles and kicked out those who had come with no intention of auditioning, save for a small handful of people, like Mary, who had already signed up to volunteer backstage. He wouldn't have minded being booted out of the room, but to achieve that he'd have to misbehave, and he didn't want to give Evans a reason to start ignoring him again.

It was truly a catch-22 situation, which worsened when McGonagall announced that she wanted to see the boys read for Romeo first.

With his time running out, Remus kindly gave James his copy of the play to read while Nick Crabtree took the stage, but he was too jittery to focus, his hands felt sweaty, and his eyes kept sliding over the words as if they were written in a foreign language. On a normal day, James could take in a hefty amount of information from the dullest of textbooks without expending much effort, but under such pressure he found himself reading the same sentences over and over without ever progressing. It was as if someone had flipped a switch and powered down everything but his sweat glands.

Crabtree was followed by Evan McNamee, then Terry Heaney, and James was struggling to get through Act 1 Scene 2—he had only just realised that Paris was a man—when McGonagall called, "Potter? We'll have you next."

A trickle of ice cold fear slid down his spine, and he looked up, shifty-eyed, as if he had been caught nicking fruit shortcake biscuits from the staff room all over again.

Vector and McGonagall were watching him expectantly.

It was all too stupid for words.

Briefly, he considered standing up and running boldly from the auditorium. That would make a splash. They'd all think it was a huge prank, pretending to audition and then… not auditioning.

Not a terribly elegant prank, but not all humour needed to be highbrow.

"Come on up, love," said Vector, adjusting the long, purple headscarf she kept tied around her greying curls. "No need to be shy."

The idea that she, or anyone, could consider him shy was so peculiar that James almost laughed out loud, despite his nerves. Even McGonagall was side-eyeing her incredulously.

"Go on," said Remus, and nudged him with his elbow. "You'll be fine."

He'd done the crime, he supposed. It was only fair that he did the time. It would be a fitting punishment for screwing Remus over.

Resigned to his fate, he stood up, and walked to the head of room. Only as he turned to face his captive audience did he realise that he'd left Remus's book on his chair.

"Right, sweetheart," said Vector kindly, "what have you prepared for us?"

A lie would have served him well, but all he could think of was the line, "Go, sirrah, trudge about," which wasn't even one of Romeo's, and utterly useless to him. Worse still, he could feel Lily's eyes on him, beautiful and green and probably full of loathing, but he couldn't bring himself to look in her direction, lest he see her disapproval and prove himself right. "Nothing, Miss."

The thin line of McGonagall's lips spelled mortal peril ahead. His senses must have abandoned him completely. Of all the times to be honest with a teacher, he had to choose this moment.

"Nothing?" she repeated. "You've prepared nothing?"

"Nothing."

"Is there any reason why you've come to an audition with nothing prepared?"

He shrugged. "I don't know what to tell you."

McGonagall rose to her feet with the sprightliness of a teenager. "I know you think it's entertaining to interrupt what we're doing for the sake of a cheap laugh—"

"I'm not interrupting!"

 _"Potter—"_

"No, I really want to be in the play!" he cried. "I just came to it late, which is pretty characteristic of me, if we're being honest here. Can you remember me _ever_ turning up on time for class?"

Some of the assembled students laughed, and McGonagall raised an eyebrow at him.

"I really do want to audition," he insisted. "Honest."

McGonagall looked at Vector, who shrugged her plump shoulders, then turned her steely glare back to his face.

"Fine," she said. "Pick a scene and read it. If you must insist upon making a fool of yourself in front of all and sundry, I might as well get my money's worth."

"Alright," he agreed. "What scene would you recommend?"

"You're auditioning for a play, Potter, not picking your lunch from a restaurant menu." McGonagall's nostrils were flaring with familiar anger, but perhaps she had decided to conserve her energy for later, for her shoulders slumped and she let out an exasperated sigh. "Would it help if you read a scene with someone who _has_ prepared?"

"That'd be good, yeah."

His teacher dropped heavily into her chair. She looked tired.

"So be it," she said, "but I'm not going to ask anyone in this room to give you a leg up, so it's up to you to find a volunteer."

He hadn't realised that people were talking until a hush fell over the room, but they must have been; some, perhaps, assuming that he was about to pull off a hilarious jape, while others, like Evans, may have been firmly confined to McGonagall's way of thinking. As his eyes moved over the crowd, his stomach twisted with embarrassment—which was rare, for him—and he wondered just how many people in the room had decided that he was the biggest prat alive.

He caught Sirius's gaze and tried to urge him to his feet telepathically, but Sirius only smirked and moved his book to hide his face, which meant his only chance was blown, because he couldn't bring himself to ask Remus after he had stepped on his toes so thoughtlessly and so thoroughly. It would have been beyond unreasonable of him. Even Snape might not have stooped to such a low, and he was more obsessed with Evans than anyone else James knew.

"Right," he said. "Well then, I guess I'll just—"

"I'll do it," said Lily Evans.

 **Act 3, Scene 2**

 **September 2016 - One Year Earlier**

 _the sixth form common room_

He could talk to her.

He could do it.

He _could._

He wasn't going to cock up, that was just his mates talking, and his mates were pricks. She was only a girl—a bloody gorgeous girl—but a girl nonetheless, and girls liked James. He wasn't nearly as sought after as Sirius, perhaps, but of the ones who weren't enamoured of his best mate, some of them plumped for him and found him quite satisfactory. He'd dated Isabella Marks from April to July and their breakup had been a doddle. They still went to the odd football match together. It was fine. He was fine.

Besides, she was sitting with Booth, with whom he used to hang around a lot during his skateboarding phase two years ago, which boded well for him, should he need someone to put a good word in for him. Booth was a decent sort, and had fancied Remus for years, so he could always make up some lie about having always believed they'd make a great couple if really pressed to explain his presence.

In any case, he had to place himself on Lily's radar, and fast. He wasn't the only one to have noticed her and shown an interest, and if left too long without meeting James, it seemed that she might be in real danger of dating someone who might convince her that Hogwarts didn't have any better blokes on offer.

So he left his mates, who had congregated by the pool table, waiting for McNamee and Crouch to finish up the longest and least thrilling game in history, to their own devices, and strode over to the sofa upon which the two girls were perched.

"Alright, Booth?" he said, and slung his bag on the ground.

"Hey," said Booth genially, though Lily was far less friendly in her silence, her eyes flicking once over his face before they returned to her phone, which sat in her hands. "What's up, loser?"

"Not much, mate. I see you've taken on the new girl. Looking for brownie points from McGonagall, are we?"

"New girl has a name, you know, and don't pretend that's not why you've come over," Booth reminded him, grinning. She nudged her new friend's arm. "This is Lily Evans. Lil, this is James—"

"I know who he is," she said coldly, still looking at her phone.

If he hadn't known any better, he would have believed that she disliked him, but that couldn't have been the case. He hadn't even spoken to her yet.

"Let me guess," he quickly supplied, a little thrown by the lack of welcome in her overall demeanour, but unwilling to change tack now, "you've heard that I single-handedly saved our football team from league relegation, right? I mean, I didn't _ask_ to be called 'hero,' but if it's what the people want—"

"Don't care about football, and I especially couldn't care less about your involvement in it," was her short response. She locked her phone screen and looked up at him. "I don't associate with bullies."

He frowned down at her, quite unable to hide his confusion. Was she insinuating that he, James Potter, was a bully?

"What?" he said, and threw a questioning look at Beatrice, looked equally dumbfounded by her mate's distaste for him. Sure, he and some of the other lads had gotten called out a few times for roughhousing, but that was a mutual thing. He didn't go around pushing kids into the dirt and stealing their pocket money. Lily must have gotten him mixed up with someone else. "I'm not sure what you're talking about."

"You know perfectly well what I'm talking about."

"I genuinely haven't got a clue."

"Yes, you do."

"Seriously, new girl," he said evenly, "I really _don't_ know, so maybe if you tell me who I'm supposed to have bullied, I can expl—"

"Severus Snape," she calmly interrupted.

That was the last name he would have expected to fall from her lips.

Severus Snape, who by all accounts was the slimiest little prick he had ever met, liked to pretend that he was a tragic, mistreated outcast, but he had ostracised himself by choice for as long as James had known him, being more interested in sneering at those of whom he was jealous, or biased against, or simply didn't like, than he was in making friends, or in being a halfway decent person. It was beyond weird that someone like Lily would even know his name. She was perfection; he was a greasy-haired git.

"What about Snape?" he said, and stuck his hands in his pockets.

"What do you mean, what about him?"

"I told you, I don't know what you're on about. I barely talk to that git."

Evans's mouth dropped open. Her cheeks were starting to redden. "Are you _serious?"_

"No," he said, and pointed to his mates. "He's over there."

"You beat him up!" she cried, her voice carrying through the room. Several heads turned in their direction. "He told me all about it! You and your mates, you ganged up on him and kicked the shit out of him!"

The lie was so blatant, and so ridiculous, that James didn't know if he should laugh or shout, for as she levelled her accusation towards him, he felt a frisson of anger that he did not want to unleash in her direction, so he chose the former. The sound carried, loud and more derisive than he had hoped. He was beginning to attract attention from others in the common room who were just starting to notice that there was an argument going on. "You believe that bullshit?"

"I believe the bruises I saw on his arms," she retorted, and stood up, her eyes narrowed with every sign of revulsion. She was quite a bit shorter than him, but intimidating all the same; perhaps because of the way she held herself, or perhaps because no amount of self-righteous indignation could cancel out his awareness of how pretty she was. "Severus is my friend, and he—"

"He's a liar, that's what he is," James interrupted. "I didn't jump him and beat him up, it was a fight, which Snape was _very_ happy to be part of, by the way, though he might not have mentioned that to you when he was crying on your shoulder!"

"Are you going to pretend you didn't start it?"

"I might have swung the first punch—"

"That's _how_ you start a fight."

"—but _he's_ the one who tried to have my friend expelled, for something he hadn't even done, by the way, just because Remus got prefect and he didn't!"

"That's not—" she began, and for a moment she seemed lost, her eyes boring into his as if she were looking for the truth inside them, but then she waved an impatient hand like she was swatting a fly. "That's irrelevant—"

" _Irrelevant?"_ he yelped. "It has everything to do with everything!"

"No, it hasn't, because violence isn't the answer to a problem like that! Nothing makes it okay for you to go around beating people up!"

"I don't go around—I'm not—bloody hell!" He dragged a hand through his hair in frustration, and what remained of his self-control was warning him not to pound on his own chest like an ape. "I don't 'go around beating people up', it was one time, and you're so bloody wrapped up in defending your precious mate that you won't even consider that he might be the one in the wrong—"

"I'm not saying that he was innocent—"

"No, you're saying that the thing he did wasn't _as_ bad as what I did, so he shouldn't be held accountable, even though he could have ruined my mate's life."

She made a noise of disgust in the back of her throat. "Now you're putting words in my mouth."

"Well then, explain why you're upset with me for punching him, but not with him for trying to get my mate expelled."

"Who says I'm not upset?"

"You do!" he accused. "He made up a lie about my friend having a drug addiction—"

"Sev wouldn't do—"

"—when actually he was in the hospital for _congenital heart disease—"_

"He wouldn't just—"

"But even though trying to get an innocent person expelled is worse than what I did, I get treated like a monster and he'll get, what, a mild telling off?"

"It's not as simple as all that! I barely know you and Sev is—"

"A sly, racist, ugly little arsehole?"

"He's my _best_ friend!" she cried. "Don't act like you know him, he's been my best friend for six years—"

"Then you must be a shit best mate," he fired back. "If you've known him for six years and haven't noticed that he's a fucking prick!"

It was as if James had floated out of his own body, detached from himself, and was watching the scene unfurl below him. The defiant expression on Evans's face shattered in an instant, and she recoiled from him, as viscerally as if he had slapped her, and he knew that he had just made a terrible, catastrophic mistake, with or without Jennifer Costner's emphatic, "Oh my God!" to add fuel to the fire.

He could feel it, though, a wide, gaping divide between them, as keenly as if it were a physical thing, icy cold and insurmountable.

"You're an utter scumbag, Potter," she spat, and shoved by him, her shoulder slamming hard into his arm as she pushed past.

Without another word, Evans stormed out of the common room and James looked at Booth, who winced at the bewildered look upon his face.

"Sorry, mate," she said, pointing in the direction of a retreating Evans with the fingers of both hands. "I'll just need to—yeah."

She scooted off the sofa, shouldered her bag and dashed after Lily at a speed that made her brown ponytail swing like a pendulum, leaving James alone, the focus of fifty pairs of eyes, and most certainly the subject of all school gossip for at least the next two days, unless one of the students were to die unexpectedly, or Terry Heaney was caught doing inappropriate things with a shoe again, and that wasn't likely since McGonagall had denied him access to the communal locker room.

That, he glumly supposed, could not have gone any worse.

 **Act 3, Scene 3**

 **September 2017 - The Present**

 _the music room on the ground floor_

People were whispering.

Not even a moment of silence had there been allowed; voices had begun to rustle through the room like a lazy tide immediately after Evans volunteered herself, and James knew exactly what they were likely to be saying. His unchecked, badly-hidden crush on Lily had kept their names coupled together in school gossip for months, and he knew for a fact that it bothered her immensely, but _now..._

He was completely stunned.

A quick look at his mates told him that they were almost as surprised as he was. Remus's brows had flown towards his hairline, and Sirius had abandoned all pretence of subtlety and had let his mouth drop open. Even Booth and Macdonald looked as if they hadn't been expecting her to do it. This, clearly, was beyond what anyone could have reasonably expected.

Was he dreaming? Was he minutes away from being woken up by Sirius sitting on his stomach? He had thought that he'd departed the mortal coil and arrived in heaven when Binns placed him next to Evans in Psychology, but he knew now that he had been overestimating his own feelings at the time, though the unrelenting pounding of his heart seemed to suggest that he was, in fact, still one among the living. That was good, he supposed. It would be a terrible shame if he were to die before he could collect his thoughts enough to fathom this miracle, let alone celebrate it.

McGonagall had leaned forward in her chair and was examining Evans as if to discern signs of a struggle, like she thought that James had telepathically strong-armed her into doing it, and still the whispers continued. Those gossip-hungry vultures he called classmates were going to think that something was going on between them, which meant that Evans was sacrificing quite a lot to help him out, but at that moment she didn't seem ruffled by the stream of questions she would inevitably bring down upon her own head.

"Are you sure, Evans?" said McGonagall, after, it seemed, she had satisfied herself that James wasn't employing the use of mind control. "With _him?"_

He should have been offended by that. He would have been, under normal circumstances, but Evans was commanding the entirety of his attention while his heart skittered about like a lost toddler and his caffeine-and-shock-addled brain struggled to comprehend what she had just done. Perhaps she was joking—but no, she appeared to be perfectly serious, having already climbed to her feet, looking at McGonagall with unblinking eyes, even while Booth and Macdonald giggled loudly and nudged one another behind her back.

"If Potter's fine with it," she said.

James didn't need to consider how he felt about her swooping in to rescue him from abasement like a superhero in a school uniform, and hastily nodded his agreement.

With great dignity, she swept over to join him in front of the stage.

"Do you want this to count as your audition, sweetheart?" said Vector kindly.

"Sure," Evans agreed. "Though, actually, Beatrice and I practiced Act 2 Scene 5 to perform together. Can we still do that for her Nurse audition?"

"That's fine by us," said Vector. "Minerva and I shall give you a minute or two to sort out what you're doing."

"And Potter?" McGonagall tacked on, regarding him sternly above her glasses. "You may want to thank the young lady for saving your backside, no?"

He wished McGonagall hadn't made that suggestion, for now it would seem as if he was thanking her only because he'd been told to, when in truth he was terribly grateful and had merely been searching for the words to properly express it. His master plan—the Make Evans Realise That You're Not A Prick plan—hinged almost entirely upon showing her that he wasn't a prick, but even his teachers were determined to set him back, which was very disheartening. McGonagall knew that James harboured an ambition to eventually make Evans his wife, and it hurt—deeply, like a knife to his heart—to know that she was actively working to scupper his dreams.

"Er, yeah, ta very much," he said, scratching the back of his head to stay his urge to fidget wildly.

"No problem," Lily absently replied. Not being a philistine like him, she had remembered to bring her copy of the play and was flipping through its pages with a slight frown. "Do you mind if I pick the scene?"

"No, go ahead."

"Cool. How much of this have you read?"

"Nothing," he said, and she looked up at him in alarm. "Yet."

"Nothing at all?"

"Hadn't gotten 'round to it."

"So, you decided to audition because…?"

"Because I'm charming and spontaneous, much like a leading man in a Shakespearean romance?"

"The play's a tragedy, actually," she said dryly, "and in whatever weird, secret spy language you and Black made up when you were children—"

"We've never actually—"

"—I'm sure that 'charming and spontaneous,' is actually code for 'obsessed with the limelight.'"

"That's basically the same," he murmured, which earned him the briefest of mildly amused glances.

"Alright then, you silly sod," she said, and flicked another couple of pages ahead. When she found the part she wanted, she handed the book to James with the pages facing up, holding it open with her thumb. "We'll do this scene."

He took the book from her, careful not to touch her hand in case she thought he was getting fresh. Despite his ignorance, he was pretty sure that there weren't any scenes in the play in which Juliet slapped Romeo hard across the face and revealed his perversions to half of Year 13. "Alright, so, er, what exactly..."

"What exactly is happening?"

"Yeah."

"Basically, Potter, you're a Montague," she said, and pointed to his chest, then turned her finger to indicate herself. "And I'm a Capulet."

"Right," he agreed. "Me, Montague. You, Capulet. Got it."

"Our families are sworn enemies."

"Like Arsenal and Spurs?"

She looked at him blankly. "Is that a football thing? I wouldn't have a clue—"

"It's fine," he said quickly. "Sorry."

"Right, well, our families are enemies, but you and I fall for each other after we meet at a party—"

His throat began to tighten.

"—and in _this_ scene, you've come to my home to search for me, even though you'll be killed if anyone else finds you."

This was starting to sound a little too on-the-nose, and he wondered if she had, in fact, heard him talk about his walks past her house with Algernon. Perhaps she needn't have heard at all to know. It was equally possible that she'd looked out her window one evening and saw him skulking past her front gate for the fifth time in a row, leash in hand, with an angry cat trudging reluctantly behind him. James wasn't often subtle in his machinations.

"You're in the garden. I'm inside but I appear on the balcony right after your first line, and you see me, but I don't see you. We both get a monologue, and I don't notice you until _this_ line…" She leaned in and pressed her finger to the page. "'I take thee at thy word,' which is when you interrupt me, but until then you're speaking as if to yourself, okay?"

"Okay."

"It's the most famous scene from the play, so there's bound to be some stuff you recognise, and make sure you don't turn your back on McGonagall. She'll need to be able to see your face."

He nodded down at the book, his eyes skating quickly over the lines he needed to recite. "So, this'll be simple, right? All we need to do is—"

"Fall in love for five minutes," she interjected, surprisingly softly. "I mean, only figuratively, but whatever works for you."

Yet another cardiac anomaly arrested his entire body, but James manfully tried to ignore it.

"Right," he agreed. "Brilliant. Thank you?"

Lily stepped back and smiled at him in a bemused kind of way. "You're welcome?"

She was being so sweet, and so helpful, but having only ever steeled himself for her scorn, James had no idea how to react to such kindness. Like an awkward idiot, he thrust her book towards her chest. "Do you want this back, for your lines? I can just—this one belongs to you, so—"

"Nah," she said, with a sly smile he didn't often see from her. "Don't need it."

God, she was so _cool._

"Can I use the stage?" said Lily to Vector and McGonagall, who until that point had been conversing in whispers. "We're doing Act 2, Scene 2, so I think I need some height. Potter can stay down here."

"Feel free," said Vector, with an indulgent smile. Lily turned and skipped up a set of portable steel stairs that stood sideways against the stage, whereupon she took a deep breath, shook her head once as though to clear her face of any stray hairs, and nodded to James as she stepped backwards, retreating into the left wing.

"Whenever you're ready, Potter," said McGonagall, in a tone that boded only terrible things.

He looked down at the book in his hands, and realised, to his horror, that he didn't have a clue what his first line was supposed to mean.

He was going to make an utter tit of himself.

But he had to go for it, or look like an arsehole in front of Evans and a room full of less important opinions, including Sirius's, which didn't seem as if it mattered now but inevitably would later when he entered his fourteenth hour of mockery.

"He jests at scars that never felt a wound," he read.

It didn't make any more sense when spoken aloud.

He was doomed.

For a moment, he almost carried on reading, but remembered with a jolt what Lily had told him about Juliet's appearance on the balcony, and turned on his heel to look up at her. Sure enough, she had re-appeared onstage and was lowering herself to perch on the edge of the apron, her braid trailing over one shoulder, a wistful expression lingering on her pale face.

She was so bloody gorgeous, and miles out of his league, but she was helping him out of the goodness of her heart and he still couldn't believe that this was happening.

Her kindness and empathy knew no bounds, it seemed, because this was more than he ever could have hoped from her and he didn't deserve it, so there was nothing to do but try his bloody hardest to give her something to work with. He owed it to her to be brilliant so that _her_ audition could be brilliant, and so in that moment he resolved to do better than simply muddle his way through it and avoid getting a detention from McGonagall. Evans deserved the best he could offer.

Provided, of course, he could fathom a bloody word he was reading.

"But, soft!" he read aloud, this time with feeling, because it seemed pertinent that Romeo would act like a sap at this moment, turning so that he was standing sideways and the teachers could see him, mindful of another of her instructions. "What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun."

That, at the very least, he understood. Evans was as glorious as the sun herself, as any sane person would agree, so that was bog-standard common sense. She didn't look at him, preoccupied with staring towards the back of the room, far beyond the heads of anyone assembled, but that was fine. She wasn't supposed to see him. He remembered.

"Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon," he continued. He understood that, too, and the beginnings of relief began to peer through the suffocating haze of self-doubt. "Who is already sick and pale with grief, that thou her maid art far more fair than she. Be not her maid, since she is envious."

He could do this, he realised, with a rush of excitement.

He _got_ this.

This, despite what he felt was unnecessarily complicated language, was nothing more than the ramblings of a lovesick prat, and what was James, if not the very same thing? People were always saying that his infatuation with Evans was pathetic, from Sirius to his mother to his cat, who couldn't speak but could communicate quite effectively with a disdainful glance. If all he had to do was stare goggle-eyed at Lily and wax lyrical about her unending perfection without fear of attracting her ire—if doing so would actually _impress_ her—then there was nobody else in Hogwarts who could do it better. For the first time since the day she'd walked into that first Psychology class, he had been granted the freedom to be totally honest about his feelings, even if had to convey them through the words of a dead, boozy playwright.

He didn't even care that everyone was watching; it was "acting," after all, and he'd always loved an audience.

"Her vestal livery is sick and green," he read, and continued on from there, his eyes moving between her and the script, though he looked mostly at Lily, thankful that his lightning-quick memory had sprang back into action, abusing the moon for how it shrank in comparison to her beauty—or Juliet's beauty, but she _was_ Juliet so it hardly mattered—then passionately lauding her brightness, "that birds would sing and think it were not night," and this was _easy,_ and he knew what it meant and meant what he said because it was _Lily Evans_ up there on stage, not Helena Hodge or one of the indistinguishable Stebbins twins, and that was terrifying enough to make his pulse race and his hands shake slightly, but it was also so simple.

He felt as if his voice were growing stronger with every word, and he couldn't spare a second for McGonagall and Vector, but he knew that they must surely be impressed by his performance, and he had no idea why he'd ever thought that this would be impossible.

He never would have guessed that he was a natural actor because his mother said he was crap at lying, but this wasn't like lying at all. It was the opposite, every bar of truth, but he could _pretend_ that it was a lie, and that was what made it so brilliantly fun.

"See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand!" he cried, properly enjoying himself now, when Lily did just that. "O, that I were a glove upon that hand, that I might touch that cheek!"

"Ay me!" she happily sighed.

"She speaks," he gasped, then stopped, his face uplifted while his eyes dropped briefly to skim over his lines, because it seemed like a good moment to stop talking and appear to wait for her to say something else. He would have done the same, if he'd happened to wander by Lily's garden one night and caught her hanging out of her bedroom window, potentially poised to launch into a monologue about how deeply attractive she found him. "O, speak again, bright angel! For thou art as glorious to this night, being o'er my head as is a winged messenger of heaven, unto the white-upturned wondering eyes of mortals that fall back to gaze on him when he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds, and sails upon the bosom of the air."

It was incredible, how easy he found it to understand what he was reading when he could attribute the words to Evans, an angel herself, who today had chosen to cast her benevolent light upon him.

"O Romeo," said Lily, smiling dreamily. "Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name, or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I'll no longer be a Capulet."

James hadn't read enough of the play's earlier scenes to know Romeo's deal with his father, but he probably would have kicked his own dad up the arse if it meant a chance with Lily, so he assumed Romeo that would do the same. He turned to face the room, but kept his eyes trained away from the many faces that were watching him, frowning at nothing. This was so easy. This was a piece of cake. Of _course,_ he'd turn around here. How else would McGonagall see his full reaction to her musings?

"Shall I hear more," he said, dropping his voice. "Or shall I speak at this?"

"'Tis but thy name that is my enemy," she continued, the words sailing prettily over his head. "Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot, nor arm, nor face—" She paused, and when she spoke again her voice was one he'd only ever imagined, lower, and punctured with a sigh of obvious longing. "—nor any other part belonging to a man."

He, and his affection-starved genitals, were very lucky that he was in a room full of other people, otherwise he might have been in serious danger of getting an erection. As it stood, it was a very near thing. He was a teenage boy. It didn't take much to set him off.

"O, be some other name!" came an impatient burst from the girl behind him. "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet; so Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd, retain that dear perfection which he owes without that title. Romeo, doff thy name, and for that name which is no part of thee, take all mysel—"

"I take thee at thy word!" he cried, and practically leapt in a circle to face her again. She jumped in perfectly believable fright, on her feet as swift as a deer, and backed away towards the left wing again. "Call me but love, and I'll be new baptized; henceforth I never will be Romeo."

Lily came stomping back to the apron again and wrapped her arms protectively around her chest.

"What man art thou that thus bescreen'd in night so stumblest on my counsel?" she demanded crossly.

"By a name, I know not how to tell thee who I am," he implored her. "My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself, because it is an enemy to thee. Had I it written, I would tear the word."

While he was speaking, she had let out a soft, contented noise and dropped her arms, her frown melting into a smile that was as begrudging as it was affectionate, as if she was trying terribly hard to be angry but simply couldn't help but be charmed, and though he knew she was just pretending, his weak, hungry heart was thumping a victorious beat.

He couldn't help it. She was smiling adoringly at him. They were _maintaining eye contact._

"My ears have not yet drunk a hundred words of that tongue's utterance," she said warmly. "Yet I know the sound. Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague?"

"Neither, fair saint, if either thee dislike."

Her happy expression began to fade, morphing instead into something more anxious. "How camest thou hither, tell me, and wherefore? The orchard walls are high and hard to climb, and the place death, considering who thou art, if any of my kinsmen find thee here."

This was just like them, and it was too perfect. She was always so sensible, doing everything right while he clowned around and never thought of the consequences. The thought of it made him laugh, and why not? A lovesick prat _would_ laugh.

"With love's light wings did I o'er-perch these walls," he told her, grinning widely. "For stony limits cannot hold love out, and what love can do that dares love attempt. Therefore thy kinsmen are no let to me."

"If they do see thee," she said, looking stricken. "They will _murder_ thee."

"Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye than twenty of their swords: look thou but sweet, and I am proof against their enmity."

"I would not for the world they saw thee here."

"I have night's cloak to hide me from their sight," he cheerfully insisted. "And but thou love me, let them find me here. My life were better ended by their hate, than death prorogued, wanting of thy love."

"By whose direction found'st thou out this place?"

"By love," he replied, which elicited another stunning smile from her. "Who first did prompt me to inquire; he lent me counsel and I lent him eyes. I am no pilot," he added, and threw his arm out wide. "Yet, wert thou as far as that vast shore wash'd with the farthest sea, I would adventure for such merchandise."

"Thou know'st the mask of night is on my face, else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek for that which thou hast heard me speak to-night," she said shyly, and tucked a stray hair behind her ear. "Fain would I dwell on form, fain, fain deny what I have spoke: but farewell compliment! Dost thou love me?"

He nodded, and opened his mouth as if to talk, but she carried on talking at once. They were owning this thing.

"I know thou wilt say 'Ay,' and I will take thy word," she said. Her cheeks were flushed pink. "Yet if thou swear'st, thou mayst prove false; at lovers' perjuries, they say, Jove laughs. O gentle Romeo, if thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully, or if thou think'st I am too quickly won, I'll frown and be perverse an say thee nay, so thou wilt woo; but else, not for the world."

While she spoke, it occurred to James that Romeo would definitely climb up the trellis, or some creeping ivy, or even a rope ladder he'd fashioned from his own hair, just to be closer to Juliet, and that the steel steps were sitting _right there_ , parallel to the stage, daring him to do it. He dashed up two steps at a time, laid his free hand flat on the stage and twisted towards her.

If Lily was surprised, she didn't miss a beat, but dropped to her knees beside him, so that they were practically nose-to-nose.

"In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond," she confessed, and covered his hand with hers, a movement so unrestrained in its haste that he could feel, instinctively, that it had only occurred to her in the moment. "And therefore thou mayst think my 'havior light, but trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true than those that have more cunning to be strange. I should have been more strange, I must confess, but that thou overheard'st, ere I was ware, my true love's passion. Therefore pardon me, and not impute this yielding to light love, which the dark night hath so discovered."

She was holding his hand she was holding his hand she was _holding his hand._

He felt as if his brain were about to overheat and blow a gasket, and for a terribly long moment, he was in real danger of forgetting himself, never mind his words, but the moment caught up to him and he revved back into gear. Screw it, he thought. His little glitch would be perceived as a dead good portrayal of an infatuated swain by McGonagall. They could do no wrong. Everything was bloody wonderful.

"Lady," he solemnly promised, with a barely perceptible glance towards the book. He turned his hand palm-up beneath hers and somehow their fingers laced together. "By yonder blessed moon I swear, that tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops—"

"O, swear not by the moon," she interrupted. "The inconstant moon, that monthly changes in her circled orb, lest that thy love prove likewise variable."

"What shall I swear by?"

"Do not swear at all. Or, if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self, which is the god of my idolatry, and I'll believe thee."

"If my heart's dear love—"

"Well, do not swear, although I joy in thee, I have no joy of this contract to-night," she said, and pulled her hand from his. "It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden; too like the lightning, which doth cease to be, ere one can say 'It lightens.'" She sighed. "Sweet, good night! This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath, may prove a beauteous flower when next we meet. Good night, good night! as sweet repose and rest, come to thy heart as that within my breast!"

"O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?" he said impatiently, as she made to move away, recapturing her hand with a speed that had everything to do with wanting to touch her again and nothing to do with acting.

She arched an eyebrow at him. "What satisfaction canst thou have to-night?"

"That's enough!" cried McGonagall, and there was a loud smacking noise, and someone yelped in surprise. Both he and Lily jumped at the sound and turned in the direction of the cry to find that Beatrice Booth had been inching closer to the stage, clearly trying to film their audition, but had dropped her phone on the floor. "Very well done, both of you, but I don't need anybody kissing on my stage just yet."

Someone wolf-whistled, which drew a ripple of good-natured laughter from the students, and from Lily, who slid her hand from his grip with an embarrassed smile and seemed to be looking anywhere but at him. James's mates were grinning at him from their seats.

"Calm down, everyone, it was just an audition," said McGonagall dryly, though there was a hint of amusement tugging at her lips. "Come down, you two." She lifted her own copy of the book into the air. "How much of this have you learned, Evans?"

"That scene," said Lily, who had swung her legs over the side of the stage and was following James down the steps. Her face was red and glowing. "Act 2 Scene 5, and Act 3 Scene 2, so far."

"You learned all of that by heart over the weekend?"

She came to a halt next to him, back where they had originally stood, fifteen minutes and one life-changing audition ago. "Yes."

"Very good, very good," McGonagall repeated. "And Potter?"

"Yeah?"

She shot him something resembling a smile. "You can consider yourself redeemed. Go back to your seat."

He would have handed Lily back her book, but she had already twirled away and sprinted to her friends—and a small smattering of applause from some of the other assembled girls—without so much as a backwards glance at him, whatever spell they'd been under broken by a return to solid ground.

Something told him not to follow her, so he jogged over to his mates and sat down heavily on his chair, crushing the book he'd left there beneath his bottom while he clutched Lily's copy tight in his hands, with a big expulsion of air from his lungs and a feeling like he'd just been flying, unsupported and unbridled by earthly restraints, above the tops of clouds.

"That was brilliant, mate," said a grinning Sirius, who seemed to have changed his tune entirely.

"Really, really good," Remus seconded. "Both of you."

"Your delivery was great; absolutely smashed it."

"And you and Lily had great chemistry. Honestly, I'm not just saying that."

"I genuinely thought she was going to snog him at one point."

"Same."

McGonagall stood up and called for Curtis Higgins to come up to the front of the room, with the briefest of small smiles as her eyes flicked past James in the crowd, and beyond her was Lily Evans, sandwiched tightly between her friends, still red-faced, and perhaps a little embarrassed, but smiling in a secretive sort of way as she tugged on her braid and listened to whatever a giggling Beatrice was whispering into her ear.

As if she'd sensed him watching, she looked up and caught his gaze, but for the very first time since the day they'd met, he didn't feel quite so hopeless, and smiled at her instead of hastily looking away.

She smiled back; a soft, bashful thing.

This was _brilliant._

They'd been brilliant. He and Evans. Smashed it right to bits.

That part was his. No contest.


	4. THEY STUMBLE THAT RUN FAST

**CHAPTER FOUR: WISELY AND SLOW; THEY STUMBLE THAT RUN FAST**

 **Act 4, Scene 1**

 _the sixth form common room_

He could talk to her.

He could do it.

He _could._

Sirius was convinced that he'd back out and even his mother had cast aspersions by calling his courage into question, but James was determined to see the thing through and prove them both wrong.

Oh, how he would laugh when he told them of his victory. How he would relish the opportunity to crow over them both as they wailed and wept, and drink the salty tears of their failure.

They probably wouldn't weep.

Still.

He was _definitely_ going to do it.

This wasn't like last year, when James was a naive young buck with too much unearned bravado. Nor was Evans the new girl at school, armed with nothing but the lies that Severus Snape had fed her over so many years. James had no idea what crime of Snape's had finally been the straw that broke the camel's back, but it was common knowledge that he and Evans were no longer speaking. The fracture of their friendship was clearly bothering Snape, who seemed mopier and nastier than ever whenever James saw him, but she didn't appear to be any worse off for it.

Rightly so. She had far better friends now, friends like Booth and Macdonald, who had never been suspended for flinging racial slurs at Reshma Patel. Nor had they ever caused a nasty scene at the school's charity fashion show because Lily had agreed to model a dress.

She had looked so pretty in that fashion show dress. It had been deep purple and silkily floaty and made James think of a butterfly. To this day, he had no idea why Snape had been so incensed about it.

And James, despite his faults, was older and wiser this year. He knew this because he hadn't had a row with someone on the internet in at least six or seven months, which surely meant that he had ascended to a new level of enlightenment. Even his mum liked to argue with people on Twitter. James had surpassed her. Spiritually. Maybe he'd start meditating. The options were numerous.

First, though, he had to talk to Lily Evans.

She was kneeling on one of the grey common room sofas, her slender arms draped over the back, watching Booth and Winnie Barnes play ping-pong with a sleepy sort of indifference in her expression. Her hair was loose, falling past her shoulders in soft, fluffy waves of autumnal red, and she might as well have been floating on a sea of bubbling lava that could strip the skin from James's bones, for the way his stomach churned at the thought of walking up to her and starting a conversation.

After what she'd done for him yesterday, he should have been feeling more confident than ever. Instead, he was as nervous as he'd ever been. _More_ nervous, in fact. With every scrap of good opinion he won from Lily, he found himself with more and more to lose, should he make one wrong move and screw it all up. Being thoroughly disliked by her had been excruciating on a daily basis, but there'd been safety in that, at least.

This semi-friendly acquaintance was all new and terrifying.

James could not let fear stand in his way, however. He needed to return her book before tomorrow's English Lit class, among other things, and by a lucky coincidence of schedules, all of his friends were otherwise occupied. This very moment provided him with the best possible opportunity to do what needed to be done without being taunted to within an inch of his life by Sirius afterwards.

Of course, if Sirius didn't _see_ him do it, he likely wouldn't believe James when he told him about it later.

His mother would probably insist that he present her with hard evidence, but James could hardly whip out his phone and ask Lily if she'd be comfortable letting him film her because his mum wanted proof that he _could._

But none of that mattered at that moment. Booth was absolutely trouncing Barnes at ping-pong and would likely finish her game soon. Evans had Law at 11 a.m. while James had Sport and PE, then neither of them would be free until lunch, but his friends would be with him by then. This was a now or never situation.

He crossed the common room with a few long strides, stopped beside the sofa and cleared his throat to announce his presence.

Evans turned her head and looked up at him.

"Morning," he said. The words came out at a slightly higher pitch than he'd intended. "Mind if I sit here? Great, thanks. You're too kind."

Then he plopped down on the sofa, landing a little too hard, and the corners of Lily's lips twitched upwards in what he could only hope was slight amusement.

"Aren't you supposed to wait for me to tell you if I mind?" she asked him.

It was at moments like these that James considered falling asleep on a beach at high tide and letting the sea take him.

"Ah," he said, cringing. For want of something to do to seem calmer, he raised a hand to sift it through his hair. "Er...yeah. Suppose I should've. Sorry about that, I'm a prat. _Do_ you mind? I can leave if you do."

She shook her head.

He reminded himself not to grin like an maniacally happy ponce. "So we don't have a problem?"

"Did you _think_ we'd have a problem?"

"Most of our problems tend to begin with me talking, I've noticed."

"You say that like you think I hate you."

"Don't you?"

"I don't hate anybody, I don't think." she replied, twisting around to sit down properly, her body turned sideways to face his. She tucked her legs beneath her bottom and balanced her elbow on the back of the sofa. "God, is that _really_ the impression I give off? You must think I'm a monster."

"Of course I don't!" he quickly replied, dropping his hand, and his insides shrivelled with shame at how his voice was misbehaving. He sounded as if he was about twelve, when in reality his voice had broken years ago. "I think you're cool," he finished, lowering it to a deeper tone, which Evans would hopefully find mature and soothing.

"And? Monsters are cool."

"Not _all_ monsters," James countered. "Randall from _Monsters Inc._ wasn't cool, and all of the cool monsters in that movie were good people—well, good monsters—but my point is, you can't be cool _and_ mean at the same time."

"I beg to differ. Roz was cool and mean."

"Roz was…" Shit. She had him there. "Whatever. You're not even a monster anyway. None of this is relevant."

One of Lily's eyebrows travelled upwards for a moment, but then she let out a laugh—a sweet, girlish laugh that flowered out of nowhere, brief but no less pretty for all that.

A hot rubber band tightened around James's heart.

He'd never made her laugh before, or at least, not like that. Not once. Not _him._ He'd heard that laugh many times, listened to it bubble up and spill, and heartily adored the way it sounded, but he'd never been the reason.

"Alright, weirdo, you've argued me down," she ceded, smiling as she pushed a lock of that glorious red hair behind one ear. "What's up?"

"Came to give you back your book," said James, and swung his school bag up to rest upon his knees.

"Oh, right," she said. "I totally forgot you had it."

"Didn't you miss it last night?"

"Well, I'd just spent an _entire_ weekend reading it and needed a break, so I was all about Gov and Politics last night."

"Sounds like a riot."

Lily smirked slightly as she held out her hand for the book. "I hope it behaved itself for you?"

He laughed at that, pathetic, dopey sound that it was. James shouldn't have been surprised by how much this little question charmed him. "Yeah," he said, handing it over, "it was good as gold."

"Did you manage to read any more of it after the audition?"

"Yeah, read it at home last night."

"What, all of it?"

"Yeah."

"In one night?"

James shrugged, to which Evans merely lifted her eyebrows in mild surprise. "It's a lot easier to understand when you're not frantically ripping through it right before an audition to play a character you know nothing about."

"You seemed to understand it pretty well yesterday."

"Most of that was because of you," he replied, not thinking, and her eyebrows travelled even higher up her forehead.

 _Shit._

He was such a fucking idiot. Now Evans was going to assume that James had been moved to comprehend Romeo's lovesick ramblings only when her luminous presence reminded him of his own lovesick feelings for _her,_ which would have bothered him less if it weren't completely true.

"I mean, because you helped me out yesterday," he continued before she could speak, his pulse jittering wildly. "I didn't have a clue what I was doing until you stepped in and gave me some direction."

"Don't sell yourself short, you were really, really good," said Lily simply, and with a quick shake of her head. "Great, actually, especially considering you'd never read it before. I wouldn't have known if you hadn't told me."

"Nowhere near as good as you," came his immediate rejoinder. "You were _brilliant,_ seriously. Better than all the others, and I'm not just saying that because—"

"You're just saying that because—"

"Because you _were_ the best? Yeah. That's _exactly_ why. And you're definitely going to get the part, too. McGonagall loves you, she was dead impressed that you'd learned all those scenes—"

"So did Camelia!"

"Yeah, and she kept looking at the floor. She didn't know how to project," said James flatly, as if he were Andrew Lloyd Webber at a casting call all of a sudden, searching for his next Christine Daaé. _Phantom of the Opera_ was a banger of musical, even if Sirius refused to agree that the Phantom was a next level cretin who deserved to be put in the bin. "You're going to get the part, trust me. Otherwise, McGonagall's the biggest idiot I've ever met."

"Oh," said Lily darkly, as if he'd just made an immensely foreboding statement, though she looked flushed and happy all the same. "Well, I daren't even _suggest_ that McGonagall is an idiot."

"Exactly. So you _have_ to agree with me."

"I suppose I do," she said, smiling slightly.

"Also, while we're talking about it," James began, reaching into his bag for a second time, while his heart and pulse and sweat glands surpassed all previous records set and quickly became the Usain Bolt of nervous physical reactions, "I got you something. This thing. To say thank you."

 _This,_ more than anything, was the rough-terrained, terrifying mountain he had to scale.

This was what he really didn't want his mates to see.

"What?" said Lily curiously, just as he withdrew a notebook—a thick, hard-backed notebook with an engraved turquoise cover and stiff, high-quality lined paper—from his bag. Then she blinked. "For me?"

"For you," he agreed, thrusting it towards her. He felt his hand shake slightly when she reached out and took it. Stupid hand. "It's nothing, really, just a silly thank you gift."

"A thank you gift," she repeated, staring down it.

"Yeah, it's like a thing we do in my family. Or my mum does, anyway. Dad always forgets so she does it for him. Says it drives her nuts. Says I can't turn out like him or she'll chase me down the road with a broomstick."

Lily let out a whispery little laugh. "Seriously?"

"Well, that's what she says, but she doesn't even _have_ a broomstick," James continued to babble. "She's got a Roomba named Diablo, but I don't think—"

"No," she cut in. "I meant 'seriously' as in, is this gift for real? You actually bought me this?"

"Dunno if you remember how you saved my arse yesterday, but you did, so I wanted you to know that I was grateful."

"So you got me a present?"

"Yup."

"A simple 'thank you' would have sufficed, you know."

"Yeah," he agreed, "but who wants to suffice when you can be dramatically over-the-top and weird about it?"

She let out another breathless little laugh. "Exactly how much caffeine have you had this morning, Potter?"

"I've had precisely one large caramel latte, but it had three extra shots of espresso," James admitted. "Don't tell my mother."

"Why?"

"I'm not allowed coffee at home. She says I'm too much to take without it in the first place."

"You're—right," said Lily, with one last flimsy giggle, and opened the front cover. "Wow."

She turned a page with great delicacy, and then another, and James could do nothing but watch her progress, waiting for his heart to get a grip and stop threatening to burst out of his chest like the alien from _Alien,_ which he'd never actually watched because aliens gave him the heebie-jeebies, but had heard was pretty traumatic.

He had no idea what her eerily neutral expression was meant to be conveying.

He would disown his mother if he somehow made Evans uncomfortable because this was all Euphemia's idea in the first place. She had _insisted,_ rather than suggested, that James compensate Lily for her time and effort with an item of monetary value almost as soon as Sirius sent her the video that he'd sneakily taken of the audition, laying down her command in a very long text message which featured as many inappropriate emojis as there were words. James had plumped for it in part because his mother's wrath was fearsome, but mostly because Lily _did_ deserve a gift for lumping her own audition in with his sorry arse.

Besides, if he hadn't come home from school with a present for Lily, Euphemia would have sighed and rolled her eyes and gone and gotten one herself, and she wouldn't have bought the right thing. His mum was all about glitz and glamour—silk scarves and diamonds and expensive Chanel perfume—and that was great because it made _her_ very happy, but Evans wasn't into that kind of thing.

At least, James didn't think that she was into that kind of thing.

Truth was, he barely knew her at all. She could have been. But he _had_ made several observations over the past year, so he had some ideas as to what kind of gift Lily Evans would like to receive.

So, notebook it was.

The trouble was, now that he'd given it to her, it all seemed a bit grubby and pointed. Calculated. Like something one of those "nice guys" James had seen girls complain about on the internet would do. Lily deserved a present because she was clever and kind and so valiant to have swept to his rescue, but there were other conclusions that she could come to. The mere prospect of the sinister things that she might infer from that gift made his stomach churn with a potent blend of anxiety and shame as he watched her turn the pages.

He hadn't bought her the notebook to make her fancy him, but he really wouldn't have minded if it _helped,_ and James didn't know if that made him an absolute wanker or not.

He also didn't know what he was supposed to do about it because he couldn't switch off his feelings—he liked her so much that there was no possible way to separate that longing from their every interaction—but his mother was right. It would be really shitty of him to let that act of kindness go without thanking her appropriately.

"I'm not trying to make you like me," he blurted out, because he was prattish to his core, apparently.

Lily stopped leafing through the notebook and looked up at him, frowning. "What?"

Now he'd probably given her the idea. Great. Would that he could have slammed his head repeatedly into a desk.

"That's not why I bought it," he clarified, gesturing towards her hands. His face was getting hotter and hotter with each passing second, as if he was a radiator that had recently been switched on, and he spoke very quickly as he continued. "I don't want you to think I bought it to make you like me as a—as a person, or—because I didn't, and I _wouldn't,_ and it was my all mum's idea, anyway. She says it's really important to thank someone properly when they go out of their way to help you." He swallowed the lump that had surely formed a visible bulge in his neck. "She says."

"Oh," said Lily quietly.

She closed the notebook and flipped it over to examine its back cover, running the tips of her fingers along the dips and ridges of the engraving.

Then she turned it back over and looked up again, her bright green eyes latching solidly on to his.

"So your mum picked this out?" she said.

"Well—well, no, I did," said James. His palms were starting to sweat. "She told me I should get you a present so I went to Paperchase after school. You've got so many notebooks in your bag so I thought—but obviously you don't _need_ another notebook when you've already got loads, which I've only now realised."

"Noticed I was a notebook hoarder, did you?"

"Yeah, which was why I thought, you know." The lump he'd swallowed was clawing its way back up his windpipe like a reanimated corpse climbing from a fresh grave. "It was a stupid idea, honestly, if you don't want it—"

"I don't think you're trying to manipulate me," Lily interrupted, "and I absolutely _do_ want it."

James could have whooped in relief and let off fireworks, but would have given his pathetic adoration away somewhat.

It also would have set the common room on fire. Too much paper and flammable fabric about.

Instead, he settled on a brief, upwards jerk of his head. "Yeah?"

"Of course. I told you, I'm a notebook hoarder, and this one is gorgeous." She smiled softly at him. "Thank you, honestly. I really appreciate it."

"You're absolutely welcome."

"No, really, this was incredibly thoughtful and I love it, and I'm only going to use it for fun things because you gave it to me," she said gravely, and folded both hands across the top of the front cover. "I mean that. Solemn promise. No schoolwork, no student council stuff and no strongly-worded letters to local MPs."

"You write letters to MPs?"

"When they're called for."

"And you're making a _solemn_ promise to have fun?"

"Yes."

James's lips twitched with the desire to laugh, though the managed to bite it back. He was showing remarkable self-control. "Isn't that a contradiction?"

"Can't you just take it for the compliment it is?"

"I'll _try,_ but I'm also trying to understand what kind of fun you can have with a notebook."

"Oh," she sighed mysteriously, "you'd be surprised."

"Working on a list of enemies?"

"Always, but I'd never write it down, leaves you too open to discovery," she quipped, reaching for her backpack. "I have a lot of notebooks because I write things. Like, fiction. Just for fun."

For reasons that James was certain he would not be able to comprehend even if he devoted significant time to trying to make sense of them, his heart began to pick up in speed, this time in excitement rather than fear. "Really?"

"Sort of."

"What kind of things?"

"Just short stories and poems and stuff." She had unzipped her bag and pushed both the notebook and her copy of the play inside it, now she was zipping it back up, her eyes trained resolutely in the direction of the task at hand. "Sometimes I'll make up a character and jot down facts about them, or a biography or something. Silly little things. Nothing major."

Immediately, James wanted to offer to read and fawn over every single thing she'd ever written, because all of it was bound to be brilliant and funny and as fascinating as she was, but he was forced to contend with a far less stalkery, "That sounds really cool."

"You wouldn't think that if you read some of it," she said wryly, and shifted her bottom to the edge of the soft, which gave her the space to hoist her backpack onto her back. She normally used both shoulders to carry it, while James was a perpetual user of one and often switched between the left and the right. His posture would likely be shot by the time he was thirty, while Evans would remain as graceful as ever. "I've got to head off to class now, though, so..."

"Oh, yeah, of course." Lily climbed to her feet and James jumped up with her. "Thanks again for...everything yesterday. Really."

"No problem," she said sweetly. "Thank _you_ for the notebook."

This had gone really well, _so_ well, better than he ever could have dreamed. Lily liked her present. She thought that his audition had been good, even great. She'd even laughed a couple of times— _with_ him, not at him—smiled at him, seemed perfectly at ease in his presence. As far as he could see, he hadn't mucked it all up, and the resulting euphoria flooded his brain with dizzying intensity. He wanted to jump and shout and spontaneously learn to play the saxophone so that he could give his frantic feelings a sufficiently jazzy outlet.

He wanted to marry Lily Evans and buy her a tropical island.

He wanted...to not have to say goodbye to her right now.

But he really, really, _really_ needed to be mindful of her personal space, less he push his luck and properly piss her off. He didn't want to be like one of those creepy dickheads who followed women around in pubs.

He'd say his goodbyes, then, and consider the day a success.

"Can I walk you to Law?" he asked instead, because he could never be trusted to look out for his own best interests.

Evans had slid her hands behind her head to pull her long hair out from beneath her backpack straps. Now she dropped her hands to her sides, eyeing him with some suspicion.

"Don't you have Sport and PE to get to?" she asked him.

"It's fine." His pulse was racing so hard that it was practically painful. "I'm very fast. I can run there in two minutes."

"Right," she said, drawing the word out a little. Her eyes were still slightly narrowed. "How did you know I had Law next?"

"How did _you_ know I had Sport and PE?"

He'd caught her, he realised, as her lips parted slightly and a violently red flush stole over her face. He wasn't sure exactly _what_ he'd caught or if he could allow himself to read too much into it—not that he'd have much choice in the matter when he recalled this conversation for the tenth time in a row later—but it gave him a happy little thrill to see her arrested by a flustered silence. She stuck him with them so often that it was nice to finally return a serve.

"Shut up," she said then, smiling a little, and gave his shoulder a light shove. "We're walking now."

She moved off and away, and James hurriedly heaved his bag onto his shoulder and jogged after her, grinning like an idiot from ear to ear.

"Was that a yes, then?" he said, once he'd caught up with her in the corridor.

"No," she said lightly. "But if I'm walking somewhere and you want to walk in the same direction, it's not like I can stop you."

"You could run away screaming."

"I've seen you play football, you'd catch me in five seconds."

"I'd still be pretty embarrassed."

"You embarrass yourself enough without my help."

"You can admit that you want me around, you know," he suggested, catching her eye when she tossed him a sideways glance. "I won't tell anyone."

That bit of cheek would have earned him a hateful glare a year ago, but on this blessed, magical day, she simply laughed instead. "You must think you're real cute to talk like that, Potter."

"It's not a matter of thinking," he reasoned, feeling very brave now. "I _am_ cute."

"I'm not touching that subject with a ten-foot pole."

"Right, but how _did_ you know I had Sport and PE?"

"Oh my god!"Lily cried, swinging her body away from him for a moment before she pivoted quickly back. For a fractured second, James felt a shrill stab of fear—trust him to push it too far so quickly—but the look on her face and the peppy inflection in her tone seemed more like bemused delight than genuine irritation. "Can you let _anything_ go?"

"What?" A goofy grin was spreading across his face. He could feel it. "I'm just curious—"

"You're like a dog with a bone, more like."

"Have you memorised my schedule, Evans?"

Her cheeks were glowing like the Ursa Major. _"No!"_

"But you knew what my next class was."

"Yeah, because you're wearing your bloody gym gear!" she retorted, gesturing sideways to his clothes as they rounded a corner, passing the perpetually out-of-order drinking fountain that Evan McNamee had once been caught pissing in on a dare. "Kind of obvious, no?"

"Oh," he said, glancing down at his Arsenal jersey and shorts. "Right."

"Case closed."

He looked up at her again. "Why didn't you say that earlier?"

"Because," said Lily breezily, "I had to think of it first."

James stopped walking at once, but Lily did a graceful little skip at that same moment, propelling herself a step or two ahead of him. Her lovely hair flowed like silk down her back.

His grin grew so broad that he felt his cheek muscles would probably ache from it later, and he darted forwards to keep up with her, his loosely hoisted bag slapping his back in line with his footsteps.

"So you _do_ know my schedule," he said, drawing level with her.

"Don't make me pull your shorts down, Potter."

"That wouldn't do much to convince me that I was wrong."

She huffed out a loud, exasperated breath and stopped in her tracks. James followed suit at once, so she turned towards him, lifting her hands to rest them on her hips.

"I assumed you had Sport and PE but I didn't know why, and I only just realised that it must have been the clothes," she said, regarding him with a crooked eyebrow and slightly upturned lips. "Would you like to poke any holes in that explanation? Only I've got class in a couple of minutes," she tacked on, gesturing to the classroom at the end of the corridor, "so I'd rather get it out of the way now."

"No holes," he said pleasantly. The sunlight sure was pretty, here at the top of the world. "If it makes you happy to feel as if you've won, I'm cool with that. I already know the truth."

Lily's lustrous green eyes narrowed on his face and James stared boldly back, unwilling to surrender this slim slice of victory he had somehow managed to wrangle, buzzing with excitement from his head to the tip of his toes, and perfectly sure that he was even more in love with her than he had been when he brushed his teeth that morning.

For a moment, neither of them spoke or moved or did anything much at all.

Then Lily tossed her hair over her shoulder and gripped the straps of her backpack with both hands.

"You're too tall," she said flatly, spinning away on her heel. _"Ridiculously_ tall," she called over her shoulder, stalking down the corridor like a queen traversing her throne room. "It's maddening. Who even _needs_ it—"

Then she disappeared into the classroom, and James's wanting little heart grew at least ten sizes bigger.

 **Act 4, Scene 2**

 _James Potter's kitchen_

 _(correction: Euphemia Potter's kitchen, who are we kidding?)_

James filled his mother in on his successful encounter with Lily while he peeled potatoes for dinner.

Thanks to Euphemia, who often said that she would raise her son to be useful or die of shame in the attempt, James had cultivated quite a talent for cooking since she had first started to teach him. Tuesday and Thursday were his nights to make dinner, which he loved and had lots of fun with because it meant full control over the menu, and no revolting green beans. He had already fashioned four large burger patties from some good beef mince and diced onion, and was busy preparing chips while they chilled in the fridge.

Since Euphemia was watching from the breakfast bar, glass of sparkling water in hand, and was convinced that he'd succumb to scurvy if he went one day without a fruit or a vegetable, he'd also felt obliged to chop up some tomatoes and toss them in a salad. That was less fun.

Also offensive. His teeth and gums were in great shape.

"She said the notebook was 'incredibly thoughtful,'" he quoted, carefully curling his potato peeler around the misshapen lump he was holding. He always considered it a win if he could clear the whole potato in one go. _"Incredibly_. That's the exact word she used. She really liked it."

"Good," said Euphemia. "You can tell her from me that she's very welcome."

"Why would I tell her from you when I'm the one who bought it?"

"So it's _my_ terrible idea when you don't know if it will work, but your brilliant idea when it does?"

"I'm just _saying—"_

"You're just _saying_ that you'd rather not give your mum the credit," Euphemia sighed, and took a sip from her water. "That's enough potatoes, your father needs to cut down on starch."

James let the long, curling strip of peel drop to the chopping board. "Why?"

"Because I said so."

"I stopped drinking Red Bull because you said so and what good did it do me?"

Euphemia huffed her derision and slid from her stool, her heeled shoes clicking smartly against the tiled floor. "Are you dead yet?"

"No, but—"

"Then that's the good it did you," she finished, moving to stand beside him and survey his work. She tossed her silky black curls and gave a quick, approving nod to the freshly peeled potatoes and his mostly-green bowl of salad. "Do you need any help?"

"Nah, I've got it sorted."

She looped her arm gently through the crook of his elbow. "You're a good boy."

Even when his mother was wearing heels—which Euphemia always did, all day, refusing to take them off until the time came for her to change into pyjamas and begin her nightly skincare routine—James was so tall that he had to bend his back to kiss her or give her a hug.

He did so now, stooping to press a quick kiss to her forehead.

"Thank you for the idea," he said as he straightened up. "Appreciate it."

"Anything to help my son pop his cherry."

 _"Mum!"_ he yelped, stomach squirming as he pulled away from her.

Euphemia let out a cackle and sashayed off, returning to her original spot at the breakfast bar. Why were the women in James's life all so graceful, and moreover, so determined to ruin him?

"I thought you had a better sense of humour than that?" she asked him.

"I do!" he hotly protested, "but not when my own mother's talking to me about… _that_ stuff!"

"Oh, I see." Euphemia lifted a sleekly sculpted eyebrow. Why, also, were the women in James's life all so capable of raising single brows when he could not? "And I suppose you're only into Lily for her mind, are you?"

"I need to rinse these potatoes."

"I also suppose that you go through so much toilet paper because you lie awake every night, weeping over her impassioned opinions on iambic pentameter?"

His face was flaming as he pulled a colander from the cupboard overhead and slammed it down on the counter. "I am running away from home."

The injustice of his mother's familiar ribbing was unspeakable. James _adored_ Lily Evans's mind. She was witty. She possessed _genius._ His love for her was _pure_ and _wholesome,_ and other such words that would have accompanied a salad particularly well.

That there was a filthy, shameful underbelly to this pure and wholesome love, that James could keenly remember the curve of Lily's bum and the shape of her calves and the _exact_ way she'd looked in a bright blue bikini, soaking wet and laughing as she sat on her best friend's mostly-submerged shoulders, that she was the only person he thought about whenever he used up too much toilet paper...was utterly beyond his control. He didn't _ask_ for those thoughts, his brain invited them in without permission. His body responded to them accordingly. That was just the way things were.

And James might have been a disgusting, horny little beast, but at least he had the _decency_ to keep his perversions to himself, not laugh about them freely like his mum was so fond of doing.

"You wouldn't last a minute on the streets, sweetheart. You've grown up far too pampered," his mother pointed out.

"That's your failing as a parent, not mine as a son."

"Oh, I'm deeply sorry for loving you."

"Yet you're never sorry for all the wanking jokes?"

"Darling, there's nothing like the pain of seeing your sweet baby boy grow up and become a dirty-minded teenager—"

"Actually, having a Chelsea fan for a mo—"

"The jokes are how I get through it," Euphemia finished. She held her hand up to the kitchen spotlight and began to examine her nails. "It's a coping mechanism. I _must_ get a manicure."

With the potatoes dumped into the colander, James moved to the sink and turned on the cold tap to rinse them, red faced and unwilling to delve any further into his masturbatory routines. Knowing Euphemia, she'd likely devised some diabolically clever way to monitor his habits. There'd been that one time that her Roomba had popped out from beneath his bed unexpectedly and scared him half to death while he was smack-bang in the middle. That had been a trauma for the ages.

Perhaps Diablo was in on it. Perhaps the whole house was a police state. Perhaps the kettle and the television and the Google home hub were spying on him, reporting on his actions to his gleeful mother.

Their Google home hub was _definitely_ spying on them all, but that was a whole other, government conspiracy thing. Sirius glowered darkly at it whenever anyone else in the family asked it to turn on Spotify.

"So how are you going to progress?" said his mum, after he'd rinsed the potatoes and started chopping them. Her glass of sparkling water had been drained, which meant the time for her Tuesday night glass of pinot noir was drawing nigh.

He looked up from the counter. "What?"

"With Lily."

"What d'you mean?"

"Well, you've got her attention," Euphemia recited, gesturing across the room with one hand that—as far as James could tell—had already been manicured to within an inch of its life. "You bought her that lovely journal—"

"Notebook."

"—you very gallantly walked her to class, and now we have proof of her little crush on you—"

 _"What?!"_ His body jerked so hard and so quickly that he very nearly sliced off his thumb. "No, we don't!"

He wished that they did. Wished it more than anything. More than he wanted Arsenal to electrify Britain with a repeat performance of their 2003/2004 unbeaten season, and that was as serious as any business could get.

He knew his mother believed that she was right, and bless her heart, she liked to try so hard to convince him, but something about hearing her say it—and she said it often, always with little evidence aside from her own motherly belief that James was the handsomest and most talented boy of his age—made him feel panicky and embarrassed, and compelled to shove even her most dramatically-voiced assurances away from him.

Maybe it was like earlier, when the prospect of talking to Lily had scared him more than it ever had done when she plainly couldn't stand him. Hoping that she fancied him was a far trickier business than being absolutely certain that she didn't, and his mum had always been good at talking him round to her way of thinking.

It would have been much more reassuring to hear such a thing from somebody like Remus, who had never expelled James from his private parts, and therefore had no parental bias clouding his judgement.

"You already know that I think she likes you," said Euphemia simply.

He had to resist the urge to stick his thumb in his mouth and soothe away a phantom pain, instead dropping his knife on the chopping board and lifting his nearly-maimed hand to tangle in his hair. "You're wrong, though."

"I'm never wrong."

"What about Trivial Pursuit?"

"Irrelevant. There was a misprint on the cards," said Euphemia icily, glaring at him despite her bald-faced lie. Behind her back, the kitchen door swung open. "She knew that you had PE class."

"I was talking to her in _shorts."_

"But why was she _looking_ at your shorts, hmm?"

 _"Sirius,"_ James whined plaintively, as his friend stalked into the room with a pore strip on his nose and his hair bundled up in a shower cap. Sirius used a leave-in treatment twice a week. James could disclose this information to others only if he fancied a one-way trip to an early grave. "Will you _please_ tell Mum that Evans doesn't fancy me?"

"Evans doesn't fancy him," said Sirius at once. "What's for dinner?"

"Burgers and—"

"Excuse me," said Euphemia loudly. "I think I can claim to know more about the inner workings of a young woman's mind than two half-wit teenage boys, one of whom is frightened of his cat."

"I'm not frightened of Algernon," James retorted. "I respect his authority."

"You don't know Evans like we do," Sirius explained, stopping next to Euphemia. "If she fancied James, she'd probably just tell him. That's the kind of person she is."

"Yeah," James agreed, even as his head screamed _listen to your mother! Believe her! Get your hopes up like a tremendous sack of stupid!_ "She's never had any trouble telling me what she _doesn't_ like about me."

"Well, those are two very different things," Euphemia reasoned, then surveyed Sirius with a questioning lift of her brow. "Check?"

Sirius dropped his chin. "Yes, please."

Euphemia reached up and ripped the pore strip away from his nose, then turned it over to examine the sticky side closely.

"Clean as a whistle," she determined.

"Of course it is," Sirius sighed, as if he had somehow accomplished something important, then he slid into the stool beside her. "I'm beautiful."

"You're both beautiful," said Euphemia, folding the strip into a neat little square. She pinched it between her thumb and forefinger and waggled it at James like they were about to negotiate a contract. "And if you want my advice about what to do next—"

"I don't."

"You do."

"Well…yeah, but begrudgingly."

"Throw this away," she muttered to a sniggering Sirius, and handed him the folded-up strip. She snapped her gaze back to James as soon as Sirius took it from her hand. "If you trust me at all, darling son, you'll sit back, relax, and wait for her to make the next move."

"The next move?" said James, frowning. He hadn't been aware that any moves had been made before now. "What—"

"She helped you out with the audition, you bought her a gift to say thank you, and now it's her turn. Again." Euphemia leaned back in her stool, her cashmere sheathed arms folding snugly across her chest. "Give it a couple of days, my love."

"And then what?"

"Then she'll come to you."

James very nearly choked at the wording, and at a very potent _twitch_ in a part of his body he dared not draw attention to. "She'll— _pardon?"_

"Like Algernon to a plate of freshly cooked bacon, darling," said his mother breezily, then fixed him with a smirk of deep amusement. "Do get your mind out of the gutter."

 **Act 4, Scene 3**

 _the music room on the ground floor_

On Wednesday morning, as James was brushing his teeth and stooping to see himself properly in his mother's bathroom mirror— _much_ preferred to the regular bathroom mirror because it had flattering LED lights—he suddenly started to worry that perhaps he _was_ too tall, and Evans really did have a problem with it.

This thought having occurred to him, he couldn't manage to get it to _un-_ occur, and as a result he found himself fixating on the matter for the rest of the day. This was doubly frustrating because Wednesday's timetable consisted of English Lit, double Psychology and English Lit again after lunch. This meant that James spent four consecutive classes in the presence of the girl of his dreams, but he couldn't properly enjoy them for fearing that Lily might consider his long, gangling frame repulsively unattractive.

Plus, Sirius insisted upon dragging James to the locker room after English Lit because he'd left his History textbook there, so James turned up to Psychology too late to have a pre-class chat with Lily.

On top of _that,_ McGonagall was announcing the parts that evening, and the results of that event would subsequently determine the course of James's entire life.

Not that he was being dramatic about it.

The play might have been the true problem, really. Thinking about it gave James funny palpitations. It was far easier to zone in on the height thing.

"Do you think I'm too tall?" he asked Remus, who had met him outside Binns's classroom when the lunch bell rang, as they were walking towards the canteen. "Like, problematically tall?"

"Can you get through a door without smacking your head off the frame?" Remus replied.

"Yeah, but—"

"Then you're not too tall."

That was easy for Remus to say. He was a nice, average, Lily-suitable height, and could have kissed her without potentially damaging the soft tissue in her neck. James was 6'2" and likely to spurt up another inch before his growth came to a halt, according to his mother.

Remus obviously had no interest in parenting him through this crisis, so James said no more about it. He considered asking the other lads at lunch, but Peter was very sensitive about his own short stature and would likely take it as some sort of jab. Then he'd spend the rest of the hour reminding them all that he was the only non-virgin of the four, and it simply wasn't worth it. James resolved to forget about it and let it go.

Until that afternoon, when Isabella Marks sat next to him in the common room to seek his opinions on Arsenal's upcoming match against Liverpool, and James found himself asking, "Did you ever think that I was too tall when we were going out?"

Clearly, he was doing a really fantastic job of letting it go.

"Um," said Isabella, her dark eyes darting to the side in confusion. "Why do you want to know?"

"Oh." Though his split with Isabella had been largely mutual and they worked much better as mates, he didn't like mentioning Evans around her. He had been insensitive enough to do it last year, four months after their breakup, and she had been weird and withdrawn for a couple of weeks afterwards. "Somebody suggested that I was disproportionately gigantic, is all."

"That...doesn't sound true."

"It is, they really did."

"They used the words 'disproportionately gigantic?'"

"Well, no," he admitted, "but it was implied."

Isabella let out a low, soft laugh, and gently shook her head from side to side. "I've never thought that you were too tall."

That was all very well and good, but Lily was slightly shorter than Isabella, so the height disparity might have been more of an issue for her. He compensated for this by asking Jennifer Costner the same question, followed by Sujith Hansraj, so that the results of his experiment would be relatively gender-neutral. They were both very close to Lily in height, and so he felt that this was fair.

Both said no, and pointed out that he was weird. Neither made him feel any better.

"I think I might be too tall," James finally concluded later.

"Yeah, and I'm too-good looking," Sirius retorted. "It's a real fucking challenge."

He, James and Remus were in the music room again, lined up in the exact same seats their arses had warmed on Monday, waiting for McGonagall to arrive and make her grand announcement. Most of the students who had auditioned had returned to hear the news, and looking around the room, James was a little relieved to see that he wasn't the only person suffering from visible nerves.

Remus, certainly, was quieter and paler than usual.

Sirius was always very pale, but that was just genetics. He wasn't nervous in the slightest. Moreover, he was utterly certain that nobody else at school possessed the raw and jagged charisma that he believed was needed for the role of Mercutio. He'd already told James's parents that he had the part sewn up.

If this were a football match, James would have been feeling equally cocksure and prepared, but the theatre was entirely new territory for him. He hadn't so much as played the part of a non-speaking tree in one of the school pantos, and that was quite a lot even without the Lily of it all thrown in.

And the Lily of it all was such a _monumentally_ big deal.

If she got Juliet, and somebody else was cast as Romeo, and he had to sit and watch her kiss some other bloke on stage…

But he couldn't think about that. It wouldn't happen. _Couldn't_ happen. Their audition had gone brilliantly and their on-stage chemistry was plainly off-the-charts. Even Sirius thought so, and Sirius liked to scrimp on compliments. He never would have said such a thing if it hadn't been undeniably true.

Still, James couldn't help but tap a jittery, inconstant rhythm against the floor with one of his feet.

"What is this obsession with your height today?" Remus asked him, picking a piece of lint from the crest on his school blazer.

"It's not an obsession," James objected, despite having made a point to obsess about it all day. "It just occurred to me that I might be a bit too tall."

"And?"

"And I was wondering if that might be a problem."

"Even if it was, which it's not," said Remus, "how would you expect to rectify that? Saw both your feet off?"

"I wish he bloody would," Sirius cut in, digging his elbow into the side of James's arm. "Stop tapping your bloody foot, for Christ's sake. You've got nothing to be nervous about."

"Easy for you to say."

"You were solid on Monday. You _know_ you were solid. You're going to get a good part."

 _"A_ good part," James pointedly repeated, giving Sirius a look. "That doesn't mean—"

"Good afternoon!" said McGonagall smartly.

All three boys snapped to attention at once. McGonagall was striding into the room with Vector at her side and her clipboard in hand, moving with all the poise and self-possession of a woman who knew that her entrance alone would be enough to silence the assembled, chattering students. McGonagall rarely had to tell a room to hush when she walked in. It was an impressive kind of power which James coveted, but also knew he could never possess.

"It's good to see that so many of you took this seriously enough to come back," she declared, having stopped in the centre of the room to assess its current occupants. Vector pulled up a chair to sit behind her, jangling her many colourful bangles as she did so. "There are schedules and objectives to discuss, but I know why you're all here—we'll get to the meat of things first."

An excitable little murmur ebbed and buzzed though the crowd at once, vanishing with a single disapproving look from McGonagall.

"Good luck," Remus murmured, nudging James gently in the side.

"You too," James whispered back, then turned his attentions to McGonagall, who was adjusting her spectacles on her nose as she consulted her trusty clipboard.

"First thing's first," she called out, her voice strong and clear. "The part of Juliet will be played by Lily Evans."

Some crazy, dizzying feeling of entirely unknown origins took a leap in the pit of James's stomach.

The rest of the room—he and his mates included—burst into a smattering of applause, while Mary squealed and Booth cheered loudly, the latter throwing her arms around Evans to pull her into an air-constricting squeeze. Lily herself was flushed pink and smiling, holding one shaky hand to her cheek in apparent shock, even though it was clear to James—and likely everyone else—that she had outclassed her competitors at the auditions.

As he watched her turn her head to say something to Mary, it struck him as unfathomable that Evans couldn't see her own magnificence for herself.

James could see it. He'd _felt_ it when they'd read that balcony scene together, then watched her do an even better job when she and Beatrice ran through their comedic back-and-forth. He knew that she'd been the best of the lot, she was sharp and talented and delivered her lines so naturally, and McGonagall was a genius for casting her. He would never interrupt her class to be impertinent again.

"I knew she'd get it," muttered Remus in James's ear.

"She should have paused," said Sirius.

"What?" said James, still watching Lily and willing her to look at him so he could give her a thumbs up, his heart smacking wildly against his ribs.

"McGonagall should have left a dramatic pause before she announced who had the part."

Remus stopped clapping to let out a snort. "Sure."

"Laugh if you want," said Sirius darkly. "The woman has no sense of occasion." He folded his arms across his chest. "Evans was a good choice, though."

In Sirius Black speak, "good choice," was the equivalent of "Oscar worthy" for anyone else, so James could not have asked him to bestow a higher commendation upon her.

"That's quite enough, thank you," McGonagall called out, silencing the buzz of voices and giggles, though there was less snap in her voice than usual. As she glanced towards her new Juliet, James could have sworn that there was a certain fondness in her expression. How could there not be? Who _didn't_ adore Lily? "Congratulations, Miss Evans. Ms. Vector and I are sure that you'll do a wonderful job."

 _"Very_ well done, sweetheart," Vector gushed, beaming at her.

"Moving swiftly on," McGonagall continued, "the part of Romeo..."

She lowered her chin and glanced in James's direction.

His rapidly pounding heart ground to a terrified, feverish halt.

Several slouching seconds seemed to tick by, unbearably slowly, moving at the speed of molasses.

"Oh, _now_ she pauses," said Sirius.

"—will be played by Remus Lupin."

The room broke into polite applause again, and Sirius let out a bawdy, bellowing bark of a laugh, but James froze as if he had been petrified to stone, the same words bouncing madly in his head like an errant, violently energised pinball.

Remus Lupin.

 _Remus Lupin._

Remus. Lupin.

And Lily Evans.

 _Kissing._

He. Remus. Was going to kiss _her. Lily._

James's stomach began to contract and hiss and scald him.

His appendix might have just burst.


End file.
